Three year old bedtime antics

shesty

This is not really a big problem but - my almost three year old is not going to sleep easy at night.

She comes home exhausted every evening. She's outdoors a lot of the day and is a fairly high energy child, so she wears herself out. However the last couple of weeks, she is messing around her bed until 9pm or later at night, despite the fact that she has big black circles under her eyes, and is lying on her arms almost asleep at the dinner table. She's up pre-06:30am most mornings.

She's just at the stage (I think) where she's ready to drop her nap, but I'm very unsure if this bedtime thing is bad habit, the bright evenings or purely that she really doesn't need the nap anymore. I don't think she can get through most days without it still, and in fact, will go up to bed herself in the middle of the day quite often. I'm really loathe to push her to drop it if she needs to hang on to it for another month or so, but listening to her every night until post 9pm is driving me a bit mad. I should add that we have blackout blinds in her room.

Anyone any suggestions? Anyone else experiencing the same thing??

Merkin

What time does she have her nap every day and how long for?

angeldelight

No help as I came on to post the same topic about our just turned two year old

coffeyt

I've read before that taking a long time to fall asleep at night is a sure sign that its time to drop naps. My little boy started the messing in bed until nine about 2-3 months ago so I cut nap back to an hour for a week and then a few days in a row he just wouldn't nap at all so I dropped them completely. He now goes down no problem at 8 every evening and is full of energy during the day. He is 2years and 8 months now so I thought it was too soon to drop them but went with his cue. Every now and again he will decide to go for a nap (could happen once very 2/3 weeks) and it doesn't seem to interfere with his night time sleep. I would suggest cutting back on length of nap first and see how she goes.

shesty

Yeah, she's two and ten months so I was kind of expecting it around now.I think I have to mentally prepare for it though!!! She sleeps about two hours or so, between 12:30 and 3 , I cut it off at three and wake her.But say today,she was up a lot last night with a cough, falling around with tiredness all morning, slept from about 12:45 to 3, and now it's 9:45 and she's still awake in her room, eyes are puffy with tiredness.I'm just so fed up with it.She definitely gets to a point in the evening....around 8:30....if she's not asleep by then she won't sleep til nearly ten.There's no rhyme or reason to it. She's in bed every night round 7:45 no matter what.She's out most of the day, we aren't big screen watchers or anything and she has a well established bedtime routine.So ....I guess the nap has to go.(ugh).

As for the two year old that won't sleep,yes we had that too.Apparently they have to almost relearn how to go to sleep around that age.We persevered (nap and bedtime) for about a month and she came round again and started sleeping fine again.I know others who have had the same problem too though.

az2wp0sye65487

Our almost 4 yr old has had this problem consistently for the last couple of years. We tried a few things but she just never seemed to be a sleeper. She also suffered from night terrors & waking numerous times each night - and she would end up in with us every night.

We recently tried using "the fairy & lepruchaun spoken word guided meditation for children for sleeping & relaxing" (bit of a mouthful!) - you can find it on YouTube.

Our daughter lies down and listens to it and it talks through relaxation techniques (breathing, visualisation etc.) which she follows and then drifts off to sleep.

The night terrors also seem to have disappeared for the most part since she's been falling asleep this way!

Alf Veedersane

Maybe cut back on the nap anyway. Two hours is a long nap. Maybe try cutting back to 1.5 hours or less and see how that works. It's a jump to go from a 2 hour nap to none if you think she still needs a nap.

shesty

Yes, I'm going to shorten to about 1.5 hours today. She was up before 6 this morning :mad: She's a great sleeper once she's asleep but she is messing around the bed....talking...for too long every night at this point and is exhausted the next day. We have a smaller child aswell and she's disturbing her at night and in the morning.

kandr10

Could it be that she needs to go to bed earlier at night? It might be she's overtired by the time she gets up. Just get a blackout blind if you don't already have one.

Odelay

Could it be the change in seasons with brighter evenings? I remember as a kid it frustrated me going to bed while it was bright outside? Could also explanin the early waking too. It's bright very early in the morning now.

shesty

Yes I do think it's partly just the bright evenings and mornings.We do have blackout blinds but the rising sun shines directly into her room and there's very little we can do about that.Bedtime starts between 6:45 and 7 so I'm happy they are going to bed early enough. .

We cut the nap to 1.5 hours yesterday....she went to sleep much quicker at night, by about 8:30 but she was a puddle of hysterical emotion all afternoon, totally unable to deal with anything.Sigh.However, I think we'll persevere.She will be three soon, and into playschool in a few months, so I guess this transition is to be expected eventually anyway.

They really should come with an instruction manual.....

kandr10

shesty wrote: »

Yes I do think it's partly just the bright evenings and mornings.We do have blackout blinds but the rising sun shines directly into her room and there's very little we can do about that.Bedtime starts between 6:45 and 7 so I'm happy they are going to bed early enough. .

We cut the nap to 1.5 hours yesterday....she went to sleep much quicker at night, by about 8:30 but she was a puddle of hysterical emotion all afternoon, totally unable to deal with anything.Sigh.However, I think we'll persevere.She will be three soon, and into playschool in a few months, so I guess this transition is to be expected eventually anyway.

They really should come with an instruction manual.....

It really doesn't sound like she is ready to drop the nap. If she's not showing any signs other than the change in pattern at night, you might be able to put the change down to something else, like the longer evenings etc. Don't feel under pressure to drop it because of her age. She'll do it when she's ready.
I sympathise as we have blackout blinds toobut a crack of light gets through!
When she's messing in her bed do you entertain it? Is she crying or just playing? If she wasn't upset could you just close the door and leave her to it. Maybe lack of reaction would cause her to get bored enough to just sleep? Or could you change the bedtime routine in any way? A lot of times people were so reliant on bedtime routines particularly that we don't notice if something's not working. Maybe shorter stories, less books, something like that?

shesty

I just leave her to it. She's messing with teddy bears (at this point I'm inches away from clearing every single thing out of her bedroom). Her nap is down to 1.5 hours and honestly, this evening she was draped all over the furniture when we came home - lying on the table, hanging over the sofa arm etc.
There was a massive meltdown from sheer exhaustion at bedtime - yet she has now been in bed an hour and is still singing songs. I'm so fed up. Like I said it's a little thing really, but she's a total nightmare the next day and she's so tired at this point that I don't know what to do. Leaving the nap long is ok, but she certainly had far more energy at bedtime, now that I see her with a short nap. But equally, she's exhausted but not sleeping (most likely overtired now). So I don't know what to do at this point.

angeldelight

Maybe don't change anything else for a while. Give her a week with the shorter nap before trying anything new and see what happens?

I'm no expert though, our two year old only fell asleep at 10 last night

Marz66

Sounds like you're doing everything right.

I wouldn't drop the nap but maybe trying the shorter nap is worth a shot.

If she's waking earlier maybe a slightly earlier nap would help. Wake her from nap earlier then and she has a longer afternoon to tire herself out?

Really sounds like a phase rather than anything you're doing or not doing. This weather is playing havoc with their sleep rhythms and routine I reckon.

My nearly 3 year old is also taking ages to go to sleep but he doesn't seem to be tired enough to go. We're going to try the blackout blind and tiring him out outside even more.