Content provided by Sarah Cummings
When do Toddlers Transition to One Nap?
The terrible twos. No matter how angelic your little one is as a baby, you’ll still have to fact that chaotic year sooner or later. And quite often, it’s more than a year; stretching into the “terrible threes” and beyond!
Of course, our kids give us an incredible amount of joy, and love, and sheer entertainment too. But this stage of their little lives can be testing for the entire family…especially as their sleeping patterns change.
Maybe they’ve been a very sleepy tot so far and have taken 3 naps a day, at 45 minutes a go. Or maybe they prefer two naps for longer, for an hour or more at a time. In any case, your carefully crafted sleep schedule is about to change.
When does the transition normally occur?
As with so many parenting tips, there isn’t one catch-all answer. Popular belief used to hold that babies could transition to one nap at 12 months; however the average age is actually between 15–18 months. And this transition can be a pretty difficult time. Since one nap may not be enough for your little one to keep your eyes open during the day, or make them cranky and over-tired, you may choose to stick to two. Which might make it impossible to get them settled at night.
Every child is different. So you’ll need to check when a good time is right for your toddler, not just the recommended age.
How to make it easier
Start by reading the signs
You can spot them pretty easily… for instance if your child won’t go down for a nap without kicking up a big fight, every time! Or if they’re taking longer to doze off, or if they don’t nap for very long… it might be time to cut one nap from their day. Monitor their behaviour for around 2 weeks and if their napping schedule continues to be disrupted in some way, it’s probably time to make the move.
Next, do a test run
Keep your toddler up and active when they’re normally napping, say in the afternoon, and see how it goes. If they make it to bedtime without a meltdown, maybe that should be their routine going forward. If not, well, maybe they’re not quite ready yet. You could try another test run in a few days but this time push their morning nap to 15 minutes later and stretch it out as long as you can. If they do wake up after an hour, try soothing them back to sleep or use a white noise machine to lure them back to slumberland.
Repeat this process the next day, and the next, moving that nap back 15 minutes at a time.
The change probably won’t occur overnight – in fact, this phase of limbo can last from a few weeks to two months – but be patient. Ultimately your toddler should be napping right after lunch, for 2 to 2½ hours, and that’s it for the day.
Remember to respect their needs
The move from two naps to one can be pretty unsettling for a toddler; so it’s up to you to make the switch as comfortable as possible. Try to understand that they will naturally feel more overwhelmed and overstimulated without having a chance to rest between all the excitement of their day.
So in the morning, introduce a little “quiet time”, during which you read to your child or play soft music. If they’re bouncing around the room playing imaginary heroes games, they’re likely to be exhausted and in need of a nap; depriving them of one will only make them cranky!
So keep mornings quite calm and, when it comes to naptime after lunch, it’ll be easy to get them settled. Then they can have their active play when they wake up!
Enjoy your new-found freedom
While it might be a challenging time at first, once you’ve made the move to one nap you won’t look back. You’ll have more freedom to work, exercise, meet friends, run errands or do whatever you like knowing that your child has a fixed nap time every day. And if they’re in a daycare centre in which afternoon naps are part of the program, well, scheduling naps might not even be part of your agenda!
Instead you can spend your little one’s waking hours doing the fun stuff – playing and bonding and enjoying some quality time together.
Hopefully this piece has shed a little light on moving from two naps down to one. If you need any more sleep tips for your toddler, or even for yourself, head on over to The Sleep Advisor now. Start paying more attention to the importance of a good night’s kip, learn how to improve your sleep every night and embrace a more rested, healthier lifestyle for you and your family.
