hi

we recently stopped day time naps for our DD who is 2.5years because it was effecting her going to sleep at night. she now completly crashes and is in bed at 7pm. she also is in preschool for 3 days a week as i work part-time so know that this contributes to her tiredness.... she is soooooooooo tired by mid afternoon and is an absoultey a mess, she tantrums, is grizzly, has trouble self-regulating gets agro (hitting etc)..........i try to keep things low key as much as possible etc, do i just ride this out while she gets used to no day naps and gets better at regulating her self? TIA

I would probably wean the naps, you might find she needs them a few days a week, an alternative is to make sure you give plenty of snacks, I have discovered that we need to have 2 afternoon teas.........one at about 2 and another around 4 then tea between 5.30 and 6.

without the snacks our day totally falls apart.

Yes, pretty much what sunshine said. Weaning suited one of them the others went cold turkey. I had to move bedtime to 6:30 (6pm for one of them) and dinner to 5pm or at least a nutritious snack at 4-4:30 (often dinner veges they might not otherwise eat )

thanks i may give her a saturday sleep as its the weekend so not so bad if she stays up a little longer or just keep cold turkey and try the lots of snacks and bring tea forward from to 5pm and get her in bed a little earlier like 6.45. i real feel for her being so tired but if she day naps she is up and down, yelling at us to go to the toilet, or for water/milk or to be rocked in the rocking chair etc until like 10 at night!

I stopped naps for my DD back in November but she still very often has one on a Thursday (after 3 days at daycare) and in the weekend will sleep in quite late so makes up for it this way. If she is grouchy she has quiet time in her room which helps for both of us!

Will she watch a bit of TV in the afternoon just until she's more used to not having naps?

i droped naps slowly - i.e over a month or two...went down to every second day first, then once every few days...then just when reallly tired...then all gone.

to be fair 7pm sounds really late for a 2yr old that has JUST given up day naps (im not an early to be person my 5 &8 yr old often dont make it to bed until 8.30/9pm a lot of the time) but at that age and stage they were having dinner at about 4.30pm and hitting bed at about 5.30 (which eventually stretched out to 7pm) but then it was also winter time when they dropped the naps so easier to go earlier
- i found with them..its like they tagged an extra 3hrs or so onto their normal night sleep to make up for the missing day nap so putting them to bed that early didn't = early wakeup or anything.

does she fall asleep in the car - maybe you could give her what i call a carnap - where about 1pm go for a drive and let her have a 20-30min sleep - just enough to re-fuel but not enough to disrupt the night sleep. (#2 did this quite a bit as we had to do the kindy run for big brother after lunch and he'd usually fall asleep on the way/way home so id just let him have a litttle wee sleep - didn't work with #1 as he'd wake up grizzlier and more miserable than ever)

hi thanks for the ideas. we put her to bed at 7 as daddy gets home from work at 6pm and likes to do the whole night tme routine and spend some time with her befre bed otherwise she wouldnt see him. am putting her down for a sleep tday and will bring back a sleep on friday after 3 days at preschool.. she does fall asleep in the car and i dont wake her when she does. figure that we will just give her about one hour sleep.
cheers

My kids need to be in bed about 6:30 when they've dropped their day sleep so maybe Daddy could jump in with bath/bed routine and cut down the extra stuff with her on the days that she doesn't have a wee nap.

DD2 is two and she only had a 20 min catnap today (normally she has 1.5 hours) and so we'll be trying to get her into bed asap as she's going to crash really soon.

We eat at 5pm normally too, very early if you are not used to it but we have found its worked well for our kids.

you can keep her up til 7 but she will need to sleep until 7 or 7.30 in the morning and i'd def suggest dinner around 5.30, she might have to miss dinner with daddy but you could do second dinner if thats important to dh, we try to always`eat as`a family but its not always possible so i will dish up when the kids need it and dish up a litte more when dh gets home the second dinner gives a bit more fuel

thanks guys.. she does sleep till 7.15am, well she wakes about 6.40am or so but we dont get her up until 7.15 as she does usually lie there and rest and chat to herself.some days she is still sleeping till 7.30 but not often and more so on the colder type mornings. we gave her an hour sleep today and she was up to her wide awake anatics tonight, but was so much more pleasent this afternoon lol so will do only 2 sleeps a week when she has had preschool the day before and a weekend catch up.........we could push her sleep time to 6.45 on non sleep days which may help! daddy will have to be just faster at getting her bathed/showerd and in to bed....we dont do dinner as a family as yet just dont have the time by the time hubby gets home, so i feed her tea about 5.30 but found tonight that i gave it to her at 5pm and she was heaps better at eating it, so this will be her new dinner time!! really appreciate your ideas and suggestions, never thought tht it would be so hard to knock back sleeps.........

we are in the process of weaning DD2's naps too (2.5) and it seems to be working well.... if I went cold turkey she wouldn't be able to handle it.

could daddy perhaps just come home and snuggle in bed with her for a few mins instead of needing to do the whole routine?.
honestly the needing to go to bed super early only lasts in the really early stages of going without daysleeps once their body gets used to it you can push it back out again.
I personally would have her fed bathed, pyjamad and ready to cuddle up in bed with a story the minute daddy arrives home on no nap days - its just not worth having melt down alleys bcos the tiredness builds up.
and yeah I get the eating together but it was a stage where we just didn't I mean I sat up at the table while they ate and we talked and had a nice time - but i didn't hold them out to my time/my schedule bcos it was hard enough as it was (if that makes sense) of course you have to do what works for you/your family anyway.
mine both slept in til after 7am aswell - basically whatever they were having at night you need to allow them time to get an extra 2-3hours more overnight initially (whether that means they sleep in or go to bed earlier - usually earlier bcos most kids wont tack it on at the morning end).