My 2.5 year old is still napping 1.5-2 hours a day in late morning/early afternoon. She's currently in a playgroup class twice a week from 1:30 to 3pm. When I signed her up 6 months ago, I was concerned about the nap time and the teacher suggested I shifted her nap time to an earlier time, so she is able to wake up in time for her class.
My daughter goes to bed at night between 8-9pm, and wakes up around 7 am. To get her to nap earlier, I'd been trying to get her to wake up earlier, around 6. It's not hard since she has a 3-mo old sister who wakes up in the crack of dawn, but she will either be really cranky or just tune her out to go back to sleep. And wake up at 7. Getting her to sleep earlier is next to impossible since she gets super excited when my husband comes home, and she'll want to play with him for sometime before starting her bedtime routine. On her school days, I'd usually take her out (weather permitting) to play and try to get her physically tired, with the hope that she'll nap early. This hasn't been quite working, instead what usually happens is that she'll settle for nap at 11, goes to sleep at 11:30 and I have to wake her up at 1 to go to school (if left alone she'd wake up around 1:30 or 2). She's usually too sleepy to eat her lunch, and will go straight to school, have snack there, and then have her lunch after school at home.
She is starting afternoon nursery school in September, (we are still on the waiting list for the morning session) which means that she'll have to shorten her nap every day. Furthermore, nursery is from 1:30 to 4:30, which means if she doesn't wake up early enough to eat lunch before school, she'll be missing her lunch completely!
Does anyone have any suggestion on how we can go around this timing issue?
My daughter goes to bed at night between 8-9pm, and wakes up around 7 am. To get her to nap earlier, I'd been trying to get her to wake up earlier, around 6. It's not hard since she has a 3-mo old sister who wakes up in the crack of dawn, but she will either be really cranky or just tune her out to go back to sleep. And wake up at 7. Getting her to sleep earlier is next to impossible since she gets super excited when my husband comes home, and she'll want to play with him for sometime before starting her bedtime routine. On her school days, I'd usually take her out (weather permitting) to play and try to get her physically tired, with the hope that she'll nap early. This hasn't been quite working, instead what usually happens is that she'll settle for nap at 11, goes to sleep at 11:30 and I have to wake her up at 1 to go to school (if left alone she'd wake up around 1:30 or 2). She's usually too sleepy to eat her lunch, and will go straight to school, have snack there, and then have her lunch after school at home.
She is starting afternoon nursery school in September, (we are still on the waiting list for the morning session) which means that she'll have to shorten her nap every day. Furthermore, nursery is from 1:30 to 4:30, which means if she doesn't wake up early enough to eat lunch before school, she'll be missing her lunch completely!
Does anyone have any suggestion on how we can go around this timing issue?
In fact , my daughter can go without her naps now (3yrs) but sometimes I need a break and force her to take a 30min nap in the middle of the afternoon so that I can just chilll out! She just doesn't want to nap (because there are so many toys to play with) and honestly she doesn't need it - BUT I do so a short nap for her, and a short nap for me!