3 year old not napping
By lillake
@lillake (1630)
United States
March 7, 2007 8:29pm CST
My 3 year old will not nap. At all. I've tried everything short of tying him to the bed. LOL And it wouldn't be so bad except when he doesn't nap by 5PM he's either falling asleep on the floor or couch, or he's in full scale tantrum mode. Like tonight, he was insane from around 5 until 6 when I gave him a time out to calm down and he ended up falling asleep. I tried to get him up but he just cried and threw himself on the floor so I changed his into jammies and sent him back to bed.
Gah, i know he's going to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for it.
3 responses
@anij34 (317)
• United States
8 Mar 07
Just go with it...if he won't nap then do "quiet time" where he "reads" books or plays with puzzles in his bedroom. Even if its only 20 minutes of actual quiet time he may actually fall asleep.
The other thing you need to understand is how much solid sleep he needs is between 10-12 hours. If your putting him to bed between 6 and 7 and he sleeps 12 hours then he may not need naps but then I do understand that by 5 or 6 he is so tired he is just a terror. Consider the quiet time.
@quispy (572)
• United States
8 Mar 07
My children stopped napping before they were 3. I just had to keep them VERY occuppied until about 6:30 and then they would sleep until 6:30 the next morning. I hated not having a break during the day, but a 12 hour reprieve was a wonderful thing. Will he fall asleep in the car? Maybe around 1 you should take him for a ride, let him fall asleep (I've done that, and when they fell asleep, I would pull into a parking lot and read a book for an hour). then let him have an hour nap and take him home. Or maybe try making at least a quiet time around that time, where he can look at books, but not run around.
