Hi, this is Linda Szmulewitz owner of Sleep Tight Consultants. On today’s episode of the Sleepy Qs podcast. We are going to be talking about the transition from 2 naps to 1. This nap transition can be very tricky for some children. In fact, I even remember many years ago when my son was making this nap transition. I remember it so clearly because he was really struggling with taking a nap that was anything longer than 45 minutes and he used to nap in my daughter’s
room in a pack and play. One day he was finally taking a good nap and suddenly I heard from the monitor, him crying, and I looked on the video monitor and what had happened? One of our cats had somehow snuck into the room and jumped into the pack and play with him, ending the nap. After I had worked so hard for him to get to one nap. Wow. Was I angry when he was suddenly woken like that!
So our objectives today are going to be to discuss: Why you think your child might be ready for one nap that might be sooner than is really the case, when the right time for that nap transition to happen, the reasons why moving to one nap too early can sometimes be problematic, we’re going to talk about the different ways that that transition can start to happen, ways to hold on to two naps for a little bit longer. And lastly, what to do if your child goes to daycare and they move him to one nap when he’s only a year old and he isn’t
quite ready to be.
So you may think that your child is ready for one nap sooner than is really the case if he or she is taking a long time to fall asleep for one or both of their naps. So maybe say normally you put your child in for their morning nap at 9:00 AM, but at 10 o’clock, they’re still in there happily playing. Another scenario that I often see take place is all of a sudden your child, overboards all of their prized possessions from their crib. Maybe that’s a lovey. Maybe that’s all of their pacifiers. Suddenly everything is being thrown out. Because
your child is in there for a long period of time and realizes that they’re not quite so tired anymore or at that point. And they figured out that they can get you back into the room by throwing everything out.
You may see that your child is protesting either the morning or the afternoon nap previously, maybe he or she went down without any trouble. And now you put them in for that nap and they’re in there screaming, or it could also be the fact that your child has just started walking. And now you’re in a bit of a regression at a year old, which is when this often takes place and your child has decided that they would rather be walking all over their crib and not going to sleep. As an aside, all of the gross motor milestones that
happen for your children have the potential to throw off sleep. So things like rolling, getting yourself into the seated position, crawling, pulling yourself up to standing and walking, being the last major gross motor milestone.
1 year regression may look like a switch to 1 nap
And so in this case, what’s happening is that there is a lot of brain activity going on. And I have seen so many children start fighting a nap or all of a sudden start waking in the middle of the night. When in reality, once they master the skill of walking, they can very nicely go back to taking two naps for several months. Ideally, you want your child to hold on to two naps until somewhere between about 15 and 18 months. Does it happen that sometimes children are ready at fourteen months? Yes. That can be the case. And does it
happen that sometimes children will hold on to two naps for even beyond 18 months? Yes, that can happen as well, but on average, most children are ready for one nap between 15 and 18 months.
The perils of moving to 1 nap too early
There are several reasons why moving to one nap too early can be problematic. Moving to 1 nap means that your child is now going to be awake for a longer stretch of time than they’re used to being at some point in the day. What is likely to happen is now you have a long stretch of time between waking up from the nap and going to sleep at bedtime, which causes a lot of crabbiness right around dinner time. What often happens is that they’ll end up going down for a long nap around 11:00 AM. And now they have a very, very long stretch until the end of the day. Being awake for too long between your nap and bedtime often causes what’s known as early rising, which is waking up extremely early in the morning, usually between the 4 and 6 AM hour. And now, the nap on the next day ends up having to start very early and you’re in that same cycle all over again, stuck with the early nap, early bedtime, early, wake up the next day. And so on. It’s important to keep in mind that even somewhere between 15 and 18 months, the average awake window between waking up from a nap and being ready to go to sleep at bedtime for most children is about 4 hours. And then by the time you get to 18 months, that stretches to 4 and a half hours. So what this means is if your child takes a nap at 11 and say they take a rockstar nap for two hours and they wake up at 1 o’clock now 4 hours later is 5 o’clock and you have a very crabby child. You will know soon enough when you make it to dinner time and your child is so crabby that they won’t even eat their meal. This is what I often refer to as sleepiness trumps hunger.
So there are a few different ways that this nap transition can start to happen. You may see that around 12 or 13 months or even 14 months, it’s taking a very long time for your child to fall asleep for either the morning or the afternoon nap. The best way for this nap transition to start is that your child just really isn’t tired in the morning anymore. Which is great! That means that they’re starting to get to a place where they can make it until later in the day for that one nap. Unfortunately, the way it often happens on sort of the
less desirable way for this nap, transition to take place is for your child to love their morning nap. They can’t imagine making it through the morning without that nap. It’s nine o’clock you put them down. Boom. They take a nice solid two hour nap, but now they don’t feel like napping in the afternoon anymore. And this is where it becomes more problematic because you have to start to push your child out of that morning nap without allowing them to get too overtired. Remember that over tiredness can cause problems with falling
asleep at bedtime and can also cause them to wake up too early the next morning.
Another scenario that can happen is say you put your child down for their morning nap at 9:30 and they’re in there. They’re happy. They’re playing. It’s about 11. And just as you’re about to go in there and get them, they now are falling asleep or they have just fallen asleep. And so now you’re like, great. What do we do now? It’s 11 o’clock do I just let you sleep? Or do I get you up after an hour? And now try to put you down again in the later time in the afternoon. Unfortunately, where this gets really difficult though, is that
sometimes when they sleep too late in the morning, now they don’t have enough sleep pressure in order to be able to fall asleep again a second time in the day later in the afternoon.
Shorten the morning nap
So there are a few ways that you can hold on to those two naps for a little bit longer, if your child is starting to boycott one of the naps before they’re 15 to 18 months. One way is to keep that morning nap short. So usually I say, you don’t want to, to go more than an hour. Sometimes you have to even limit it to 45 minutes so that they’re not going through too many sleep cycles. And usually I recommend that parents wake their child from the morning nap by 11:00 AM so that they don’t sleep too late and then again, not have enough of that sleep pressure in order to fall asleep in the afternoon. For the afternoon nap, if your child is taking that nap before 2 o’clock, then I would certainly move it to 2 o’clock that in and of itself can help make sure that that afternoon nap happens. If 2 o’clock is still too early, then you may need to shift that afternoon nap to 2:30, 3 or even 3:30 is not too late for that afternoon nap to happen. As an aside, bedtime is likely to, to move later with this nap transition as well, because there usually is a 4 hour awake window for children
this age between nap and bedtime. So that means if your child naps from 2:30 to 4 or from 3 to 4:30, you’re looking at about an 8 or an 8:30 bedtime, and that’s pretty normal. Now, some children, you can put them to bed at their normal earlier bedtime, and they’ll just roll around and play and be totally happy to be in there until they’re ready to fall asleep. Other children, you put them to bed too early and they will scream and cry and be very angry thinking to themselves “what have you done by putting me to bed when I’m
not tired yet?” So this is a little bit variable based on your individual child. You may need to move bedtime later, or you may be able to keep it the same time and just know that your child may not fall asleep as quickly when you put them to bed at night.
Try a morning cat nap
If you’ve tried some of these other shortening tactics for the morning nap, you’ve moved it to 45 minutes or an hour and your child is still not falling asleep in the afternoon, but they can’t make it until 12 o’clock or when you push them to 12 o’clock, now that becomes a very short nap, another thing that you can try is to do what I think of as a cat nap in the morning. So what this means is that you simply only let your child nap for 15 minutes, which I know can sound crazy, but the idea with this is that you’re letting them take just a
little, a little bit of a snooze. What this does is it just kind of takes the edge off of all of the exhausted in the morning, but you’re not allowing them to go through any sleep cycles. Usually you want this catnap to happen, ideally between 9 and 10AM. I’ve seen it. Still work as late as 10, 10:30. So you just don’t want it to get too late because then you will have problems in the afternoon. But you just do that very quick 15 minute nap. This can be in a stroller and a car seat. If you’re running errands in the morning. Oh look, you fell asleep. I let you sleep for 15 minutes and then I got you up. Or I have had many families put their child down for this nap. Actually put them in the crib, wake them up at 15 minutes. I’ve even had some cases where parents will
just hold their child for a 15 minute nap in the morning. What this means is now when you go to put them down in the afternoon, you’re going to, I want to aim for closer to 1 or 1:30 in the afternoon, but they’re able to make it to a later nap. So again, that shortens that window between nap and bedtime. And now
they’re not over tired because they’ve had that little cat nap to take the edge off things in the morning, so they’re able to take a good nap in the afternoon, ideally around 2 hours. Now they’re napping 1-3. What can sometimes happen if you just try to push your child to one nap at noon. Sure, they can make it there. And lo and behold, they will fall asleep very quickly at that point. But unfortunately now with all of that over tiredness, it ends up being a short nap. Maybe it’s 45 minutes. Maybe if you’re lucky it’s an hour and a half, but even an hour and a half at noon only gets you to 1:30. Again, you’re looking at 5:30, 6 o’clock you’re going to have a very, very tired child on your hands. So I’ve had a lot of success with parents doing the cat nap in the morning. Just that 15 minute nap, then they can make it to 1 or 1:30.
A question I often am asked is, well, how do you know when they don’t need that cat nap anymore? And the answer really is when they will no longer fall asleep for it. In some cases. It just gets too late for that cat nap to happen. So you’re looking at, you know, Oh, well you’ll fall asleep, but it’s not until 11. Now it’s going to make it nearly impossible for them to fall asleep in the afternoon, even before two o’clock. And that’s the point where you’re probably going to want to cut out the cat nap and just try to push your child as close to noon as possible.
There are some cases where parents really can’t get them to noon by 11. They’re just too tired. And if they push it later than 11, then they’re overtired and the nap ends up being just too short. If you’re going to land at 11 in the beginning for their one nap, it’s really important that you don’t get stuck there. So once your child is napping at 11, hopefully for about two hours. Then you want to start to inch it later pushing it to 11:15 after a few days, then 11:30 after a few days eventually getting it to noon and then, even pushing it beyond. So usually by about 18 months, most children are able to make it to 1 o’clock and they’re napping from about 1 to 3pm.
Watch out for the 10/11am lull
The other thing to remember is that even when children are ready for one nap, there becomes a really big lull in their day, often around 10 or 11 in the morning. That’s the time where they, they look super sleepy. You know, if you put them down, they would probably actually fall asleep. But that nap is just too early for them. And so you really want to try to push through that. The best thing to do is try to get outside, get a little bit of fresh air, try to distract them with a snack and then about 11:30 or so they’ll have lunch and
then they go down for that nap from there. So, not only is this a nap transition, but it’s really a whole change in the order of your child’s day. In most cases, when children are solidly taking two naps, their day looks like I wake up in the morning. I play. I have breakfast. I take my morning nap. I wake up. I have lunch. I play for a bit. I take my afternoon nap. I wake up. I play. I have dinner. I go to bed. But when you’re changing to one nap, now you need to change it. All of the associations that happen throughout the day, the way that small children understand time is through those associations. And so now their new day looks like: I wake up. I play, I have breakfast. I play some more. Maybe we go out, do an activity. I have a snack. I play, I have lunch.
And now I go down for my long nap and then I wake up, I play, I have dinner. I go to bed. So you’re really creating a whole new order to the day for them. And you want them to start to understand what to expect in this new order.
Daycare nap transition at a year
The last thing I want to address is what to do if your child goes to daycare and they moved them to one nap before your child is really ready. So many daycares have a policy that children move into a toddler room where they start taking one nap at a year old and some children are okay with this and can tolerate it, but may not be quite ready for it, but they hold it together well enough and other children really struggle with it. In most circumstances that nap at daycare is that noon and children generally start to get the hang of it
in daycare and will often do a good two hour nap, even if they’re not really quite ready for it, but can do that because of the whole concept of peer pressure at daycare for sleep in general, which is sort of a topic for another podcast. Unfortunately, at home they will have a hard time making it to one nap. So if your child moves to one nap at daycare before they turn a year old, a few things that you can do, especially if they’re exhausted in the evening, depending on what time you pick them up from daycare, it might be that you try
to squeeze in a last nap, even a very late one, say at 4:30, maybe from 4:30 to 5, so that they’re not so overtired at bedtime. Most children, when they’re not ready for one nap, especially at daycare, they come home and they’re so, so tired. And if it’s, you know, dinner time, then they’re going to eat dinner and
go right to sleep. But if you have a little bit of time before it’s dinner, then you can do it a little bit of a catnap just to help them get a bit more sleep for the day. This can be particularly helpful. If your child still, isn’t
doing a very good two hour nap at daycare regularly, they’re going to be exhausted.
The other thing to keep in mind is that, if your child has moved to one nap at daycare and they’re under 15 months, sometimes even over 15 months, they may still very well need 2 naps on the weekend. And if that’s the case, then that is absolutely fine to do, please, please do not stress that you need to be doing exactly the same thing schedule wise at home that your child is doing a daycare. So that means on the weekend, your child may actually really need time to catch up. And sometimes our lives get busy and on the weekends, we want to go, go, go and do all sorts of things, but you may see that your, child really, really needs that weekend time to recapture some of the lost sleep from the week. So please keep that in mind. What you’re going to see is that by about 9:00 AM on Saturday morning, you’re staring at the four walls. Your child is
cranky and you’re thinking to yourself, there’s no way we’re going to make it to noon. And so that’s how you will know it is absolutely fine to still put your child down for a morning and an afternoon nap until they’re really ready for the one nap on the weekends as well.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing
A couple last things to keep in mind about this nap transition. So even when children go to one nap, there can still be days that are to two nap days. And this is what gets a little bit hard to know ahead of time. Some days, maybe 2 nap days and some days, maybe one nap days in the beginning until your child is really solidly, ready to just have one nap for every single day. I can tell you from personal experience with both of my kids, I switched them to one nap when I thought they were ready. And after a few days, and then I think in the case of my son after a week or two, I realized he really wasn’t ready. And we went back to two naps and we did that for a little while longer. And I actually think that by about 18 months, I sort of kicked him out of his morning nap because well, second child, and we just couldn’t go anywhere at that point. Your child will let you know if they’re really not ready and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with going back to two naps. If they still need them for a little bit longer, I hope that this information has been helpful to you. Please reach out and let us know if you have any questions about transitioning your child from two naps to one. This is Linda Szmulewitz and this has been the Sleepy Qs podcast. Thanks for listening in.
