Hi, it’s Linda owner of Sleep Tight Consultants today on the Sleepy Qs podcast. We’re going to be talking about naps and in particular, short naps, short naps are hard on everyone. They’re hard on children because when they don’t sleep enough, they’re tired and cranky and they may not then sleep well at night. And they’re hard on parents when parents are home with children and they’re feeling stressed out because they need their child to sleep. They know that without that nap, they’re going to be tired. They’re going to have a hard time making it through the day. They may be out more at night, and let’s face it, parents need breaks during the day. We deserve them.
So as an overview for what we’re going to be talking about, we’re going to go over what constitutes a short nap and why those happen. We’re going to talk about short naps for newborns, which are a little bit differentthan short naps for older children. And we’re going to be talking about why naps may be short for children past that newborn period. And then of course, how to improve those short naps, if they’re happening to your child.
What is a short nap?
A nap is considered to be not long enough when it doesn’t pass when it doesn’t pass the 30 minute mark and really even the 45 minute mark. Ideally naps are at least an hour because that’s how, you know, your child has crossed from one sleep cycle to another. Many children are. really very good at taking exactly 30 minute naps. You might be thinking to yourself, how does he know it’s only been 30 minutes? Is he wearing a watch in there? My son was a textbook 30 minute napper. Every day I would watch him. I would see on the video monitor, 30 minutes would hit all of a sudden the fingers would start moving the toes would start moving and he was up. Those short naps that he was taking lasted until about 7 months old.
So when your child doesn’t go from one sleep cycle to the next, then that nap isn’t really as restorative as it could be otherwise. Now, does it not count as a nap at all? No, not necessarily. It all goes into the cumulative amount of sleep that your child needs from the day. But what you’ll notice is that your child is still going to seem tired when they wake up from those naps that don’t cross from one sleep cycle to the next. It is very normal though, for children to wake up a little bit toss around and then be able to get themselves back to sleep. So if you’re watching your child on a video monitor, you’ll see that that happens. And you’ll see that they actually can connect those sleep cycles from one to the other.
Newborns and short naps
Newborns often take very short naps, and this is really normal for many reasons. One big reason is because newborns brains aren’t developed to the point in time or to the place where they’re able to connect those sleep cycles easily. A lot of this has to do with brain maturation. And so as your child’s brain grows and develops, they will get to a point where they can connect those sleep cycles more easily. This can happen often around the six month mark, which I always feel awful telling parents of newborns because I know that if you have a 1 or a 2 month old, who’s taking short naps, 6 months may feel like an eternity from now.
It’s not to say that it always takes that long. I have definitely seen children’s naps improve before then, but in many cases, that is how long sometimes that process of brain maturation can take. Also for newborns, as we’ve discussed on other podcasts, babies are not born with the ability to soothe and regulate themselves. And so they need help falling asleep when they’re going down for a nap and also at bedtime in many cases. And so then when they get to that sleep cycle, they often have a hard time keeping themselves asleep, which is why, in many cases, if you’re holding your newborn for a nap or they’re being worn in a carrier, or they might be in a stroller where they’re moving, they might have an easier time crossing from one sleep cycle to the next.
You may find that your newborn has a hard time being put down for naps. So they might sleep great when they’re being held and the minute you put them down or within a few minutes, now they’re up. It is okay, when you have a newborn to do whatever you need to do in order to help them get those naps in. So a nap that’s been held for, or a nap that has motion sleep so in a stroller or car seat is absolutely better than no sleep at all during the day.
I really encourage parents of newborns to really attempt to do one or two naps in a crib or bassinet, especially at the beginning of the day when naps are going to be much easier. As you move into the later hours of the day where your child is going to become more over naturally., then using all of the tools in your toolbox to help your child nap is completely fine. That means that you may be using a carrier or a car seat or a stroller, whatever it is, as long as it’s safe, it’s fine to do that for your child’s naps.
Swaddling newborns for naps
The other thing that sometimes confusing for parents of newborns is whether or not you should swaddle them for naps. So if your child is swaddled at night, then I would recommend that you swaddle for naps as well. It might even be the case that if your child isn’t swaddled at night and then they’re not napping while during the day you can swaddle them for naps and that’s fine too. I know that there’s sometimes concern that if you swaddle your child during the day, and now they take a long nap, are they going to think that that is night’s sleep? Worst case scenario? You wake them up. I know that sounds crazy. I know that everybody thinks you don’t wake a sleeping baby, but there are many circumstances that require that you wake a sleeping baby and I don’t know who came up with that expression, but I would love to have a conversation with them because I find that waking sleeping babies is totally fine, especially in that newborn phase where you really want to help them switch over their days and their nights so that they’re sleeping more at night and less during the day and they have their internal clock straightened out.
Sleep crutches cause short naps
As you’re moving past that newborn period now naps may often be short for different reasons. So here are a few of those things that could be causing your child’s naps to be short: Sleep crutches, number 1 often caused children to take short naps. Sleep crutches are anything you do to or for your child in order to help them fall asleep at the beginning of the nap or same thing at the beginning of the night. A sleep crutches, something that you may need to use to help your child fall asleep especially during that newborn phase, when they have limited ability to sleep independently, but as children move past that 4 to 6 month range, they start to become more and more capable of putting themselves to sleep and staying asleep. And if your child needs help falling asleep at the onset of that nap, then when they get to that 30 or 45 minute mark, they often wake up and they can’t get through those sleep cycles. So helping your child learn how to fall asleep independently for those naps is going to be a huge piece of helping naps start to improve.
Overtiredness causes short naps
Overtiredness also causes children to take short naps. Children become overtired when they’ve been awake for too long between either waking up in the morning and a first nap, between naps, or between that last nap and bedtime. How long it takes for your child to become overtired is largely based on their age. And so their awake window is going to be dependent on what sort of developmental stage they’re at and how long they are capable of being awake before they become overtired. So for example, if you have a 6 month old, it’s likely that your child is starting to become overtired at about two hours. If they are going two and a half hours, three hours between naps, now when you put your child down, they might fall asleep very quickly because they’re overtired, but that over tiredness prevents them from being able to get through that sleep cycle at 30 or 45 minutes. And now, even though they were very sleepy, when they went to bed, now they can’t stay asleep for that nap.
Not enough sleep pressure can cause short naps
For some children not being tired enough may make it hard for them to stay asleep. Now I know that you’re thinking to yourself, Linda, you just said that our child needs to not be too tired, but there is a range. So I’ve seen some babies, particularly younger babies who, if you put them down too early, so say it’s a 6 month old and you put her down at an hour and a half of awake time. She may fall asleep because some children will just fall asleep, but you know, more easily when you put them down than others, but now she doesn’t have enough sleep pressure in order to be able to stay asleep. Sleep pressure is the amount of pressure that builds up in your child from one nap to the next and when they get to the point where that pressure is at the highest, now they’re able to fall asleep easily and they often will stay asleep for the right duration of that nap time.
Dark room can help improve naps
Naps may be short for children also, if they’re not sleeping in a dark room, now parents always asked me how dark does the room actually have to be. Children do not need to sleep in a cave for all sleep, to be good sleep. Unfortunately, though, if you have a child who is really alert and it’s just very stimulated by all the things that are happening around them, then being in a dark room can significantly improve their naps.
As I was saying before, you have to have a certain amount of sleep pressure in order to be able to fall asleep, but no matter what naps are never going to have the same amount of sleep pressure as your child has at bedtime. And that’s where it builds up throughout the whole entire day, and it makes it easier to fall asleep at bedtime then it is at any other time. During the day, also at night, your brain is starting to produce melatonin and that allows you to fall asleep and stay asleep. So for many reasons, Naps are much harder for children than night sleep is.
Some children need a lot of physical activity
Another factor could be that your child isn’t getting enough physical activity. This is particularly the case with toddlers. Toddlers require a lot of activity, much more than actually many parents are able to give their children, especially if we’re working, but also who has as much energy as a toddler?
This is often why toddlers in daycare can sleep really well because they have all of the other kids in the classroom that really wear them out. But even for babies in between those naps, you want to get them all of that activity. Also getting your child outside, getting them fresh air, getting them natural sunlight. Even if it’s cold, cold air is good for them. And this can often help improve their sleep drastically.
Nap transitions can lead to a temporary period of short naps
Lastly naps can often remain short when your child is in the midst of going through some sort of a nap transition. So if they’re going from 3 naps to 2, or they’re going from 2 naps to 1, especially. And the reason that this happens is because it’s going to take some time for your child’s brain to start to consolidate multiple naps into less naps. So for instance, if your child was taking three naps and one was an hour and a half, and one was an hour and one was a half an hour. Now, when they drop that last nap, their naps all might remain the same length of time, the ones that are left at 1st and 2nd nap, but they need still, probably about the same amount of sleep during the day and so it’s going to take a little while for them to consolidate those 3 naps into 2 longer naps. Same thing when children go from 2 naps to 1. They often will take 2 hour and a half naps each day. And now when they go to 1 nap, they still are taking one hour and a half now, but their brain hasn’t quite yet figured out that they only get one opportunity in the day to fall asleep, and they need to get all of that sleep in that one nap stretch.
How to improve short naps
So, what do you do if your child is taking short naps? So here’s some tips to help improve those short naps. You want to watch your child’s awake window, make sure that they’re not getting over-tired again, that’s largely based on your child’s age, but you should also be watching for tired signs. So is your child rubbing their eyes? Are they yawning? Are they not making eye contact? Are they looking off kind of to the corners of the room? Are their eyes getting a little bit glassy or are you getting into that overtired phase where you’re getting that crankiness, the constant eye, rubbing the ear, rubbing the repeated yawns. There’s that little red rim that’s kind of starting to circle your child’s eyes. Maybe their eyebrows are turning red. If you’re moving into that overtired phase, now your child is likely to have probably a harder time falling asleep, but you’re going to end up with shorter naps as well.
You want to make sure that your child is napping in a cool and dark sleep environment, whenever possible. I realized that daycare naps, this might not always be possible, but you know, you do the best you can with the circumstances that you have. You want to make sure that you’re doing a nap routine before your child goes to sleep. And so this doesn’t have to be as involved or as elaborate as a bedtime routine, which I would argue really doesn’t need to be much more than 20 minutes either.
But for nap routines, that you do want to have something that signals to your child’s brain, that it’s going to be time to go to sleep. As I said, naps are harder than night’s sleep and it’s hard for children to shut down in the middle of the day and just go to sleep, especially when they’ve been playing and interacting with the world around them. And so we want to go into their room, turned down the lights a little bit, maybe read a short book, maybe you sing a song and then they’re going into their sleeping space from there. Nap routines help children change gears to go from being awake and playing to. Now I need to shut down and go to sleep. And this is something that even daycares can do. In many cases, children struggle with naps at daycare, and I’ll suggest that they ask the daycare worker to do just a brief nap routine. And even that can make a difference.
Ensure that your child knows how to fall asleep independently for naps
Very, very important: you want to also make sure that your child is going down fully awake for that nap. So not getting helped drifting off prior to being put into their sleeping space , and also not being helped to fall asleep once they’re in that sleeping space. So if you’re patting your child to sleep or rubbing their back or even singing to them as they’re falling asleep, these are things that your child is going to now need when they go through that sleep cycle and that can make it harder for them to stay asleep. And so the idea is that if your child is independently falling asleep at the beginning of the nap, then when they get to that sleep cycle, they may wake up a little bit, again, very normal, but they’re going to be able to keep themselves asleep.
Give your child time to go back to sleep when the nap isn’t long enough
The last piece of improving those naps is if your child has gone down awake at the beginning of the nap and they wake up at 30 or 45 minutes, maybe they’re in there talking, playing, moving around, or even crying that you’re giving your child time to go back to sleep when that nap isn’t long enough. And this is really important because children are very capable of putting themselves back to sleep. It may be hard. It is absolutely the hardest piece of all the sleep skills that you’re going to ask your child to do. It’s the hardest one for them to be able to accomplish. It’s the last of all of those skills to come together. But if you don’t give your child an opportunity to learn how to fall back to sleep, then you don’t know that they could actually probably do it. And so what that means is if your child sleeps for say a half an hour, you want to give them until the end of the hour from where they fell asleep to go back to sleep. So that means if your child’s up to half an hour or giving them another half an hour,. if your child sleeps 45 minutes, you’re giving them another 15 minutes to see if they can go back to sleep.
It may mean that you go in and just do a brief check-in, you know, “I hear you, it’s still nap time and you to go back to sleep” or you might find that that really overstimulates you child and you need to just give them some space and see what they’re capable of doing on their own.
Incidentally, if your child is only taking one nap a day, so hopefully that’s an afternoon nap. Then I usually say, you want to give your child to the hour and a half from where they fell asleep to go back to sleep. And the reason is because for a child taking one nap an hour and a half is really the bare minimum. Anything less than that, they’re still going to be very tired. And they’re also going to have a hard time making it through until bedtime.
For younger babies, keep at it!
Lastly for babies under six months, many, many parents really struggle with getting children to take longer naps. And what I will often encourage them to do is if your child is capable of falling asleep on their own, keep working on it, keep practicing it. As your child gets closer to six months. Your child is going to start to become more capable of making it through those sleep cycles. And what I’ll often see is that if you have say a 4 or 5 month old, they’re falling asleep on their own, they’re taking lots of 30 minute naps as they get older. It’s like a slow trickle. Every few days you’ll start to get a longer nap. And eventually as you get closer and closer to 6 months, and it might not be all the way to 6 months, it could be younger. Now you’re starting to get much. More improved naps. You’re getting an hour, hour and a half naps, maybe even longer, because this is the point in time where your baby’s brain is developed to the place where they are capable of taking longer naps. And they’re capable of getting through those sleep cycles. And that’s something that they’re going to be able to do as they grow and develop. And it’s not something that you can necessarily make happen until they’re ready to be able to do it.
Thanks for tuning into today’s Sleepy Qs podcasts. Don’t forget to leave your five-star review and we’d love to hear from you. So if you have a question about your child’s sleep, feel free to send us a message through our Sleepy Qs website. That’s www dot S L E E P Y Q S.com on our contact page. Feel free to send us a message and we will be happy to answer your question here on our podcast. Thanks.
