Bed Time- how early is too early?

[minimatron]

Olivia is now 22 months and she has been trying to cut out her day sleeps on and off for a few months now. However in the past 2 weeks, she has pretty much said good bye to them

However, by about 530...usually dinner time, she is so tired and today she was ready to sleep at the table. I tried keeping her awake but she was past it and I have just put her to bed (6pm). Usually I can string her out til 730pm and shes grizzly but manages.

Ok, so from peoples experience....will she sleep through? If shes tired by this time at night should I just put her to bed or is it a bit too early? What time does your 22 month old or there abouts, go to bed?

I really miss her day sleep!!! But I still do the whole put her down to rest and she stays awake. Agg what to do!

TIA Melissa

[visitor1]

Chelsea is a bit older (26 months) but she is still having a day nap. She goes to bed around 8-830 but plays til 10pm in her bed..LOL

I know for her if she goes to bed any earlier she doesnt sleep very well.

We also dont eat tea til 7-730.

If your DD is tired the maybe its best she goes to bed, last thing you want is an over tired toddler!

[Olive]

DD is also 26 months, no day sleep, we do dinner no later than 6pm then straight into the bath, bed by 7pm, on the weekend we often feed DD something different to us so dinner for her at 5.30 and put her to bed by 6.30. when DD first dropped her sleep she fell asleep at the table, but she got used to no napping and is now fine!!

[minimatron]

How long does it take for them to get used to it?? Olivia has fallen asleep at the table a few times.
Well she didnt go to sleep...now we are hearing it!

[Olive]

not long!! DD only dropped hers at the start of jan. so only 5 weeks, i wouldnt have an issue with putting her down at 5.30pm!! as she gets used to it, just increase bedtime by 5 minutes

[Captain]

When Danielle dropped her day nap she started going to be earlier at night. I just had to judge it on a day by day basis. Her bed time is normally 7pm, but she would go earlier if needed, and yes some days that meant 5.30pm. I found it took several months for her to fully get used to it. Some days she would go back for a nap, just depended on what we were doing, until having a nap meant that she would be awake until 9 or 10pm!

So just go on what Olivia seems to need, if she starts getting up to early you might need to push back her bedtime a bit, but if she sleeps through, then she must need the sleep.

[*Belle*]

When Julia doesnt sleep during the day we have dinner at 5.30 - 6pm and she is in bed by 7pm at the latest. If she does have her one day sleep she goes to bed later around 8pm or so now.

[Kazmar]

Annabelle's bed time is 6:30pm She gets very tired before hand but I keep her occupied with quick things. Book reading, singing nice soft songs, just to ease her into it. Instead of her just sort of passing out before its 6:30

[minimatron]

Thanks everyone. Well, after getting out of bed after I initially put her there at 6pm, she got up and was little miss cranky pants until 730...where she slept until 7am.

So I guess its going to take a while for her to get used to it and i have to be flexible.

I really miss her day sleeps...oh I think I said that before!!!!

AND cranky toddler = cranky mummy

[Curly]

My DS cut out his daysleep at 18 months

He is now 28 months and goes to bed at 6pm on the dot. Dinner is at 5pm, followed by bath, warm milk, story and bed. He has his own separate mealtime, as he gets older he will be able to stay up later and eat with us. He wakes up at 6am but that works for us as DH has to get up early to go to work.

In the early days he was sometimes in bed by 5.30pm when he was getting used to not having the nap. We cut out the nap rather than DS himself...he wasn't going to bed until 10pm, sometimes later, at night and it was driving us nuts. This way, he actually gets more and better quality sleep. We had also noticed that if he had a nap he was more likely to wake during the night.

I could still get DS to have a nap now if I wanted him to - and occasionally he does need one. But if he does have a nap he is still awake at 11pm which is ridiculous. That is okay once in a while but not every night, no way. At first he would have no nap for maybe 3 days out of 7 (or one day he would have a nap, the next day no nap etc etc), and it gradually increased as we reset his sleep pattern - we didn't force him to stay awake if he was obviously needing to go to sleep - it was more a case of gauging his mood and energy and deciding "okay, no nap for you today".

For a while we were in a pattern where once every two weeks he needed a day nap, like a clock that needed resetting, but now it's maybe once a month he will have a day nap.

Sometimes, especially in the early days, I would give him dinner at 4.30pm so that he would eat better...and I often gave him his main meal at lunchtime rather than dinner time because he was too tired to eat properly in the late afternoon. So he would have toast or sandwiches or even cereal at dinner, something quick and easy. In fact, that would be my top tip - main meal at lunchtime.

We were aware that he got very fragile around 5pm and if he lost it, that was it, he would cry till he went to sleep. So we would be very gentle with him so as not to set him off, nice happy bath etc. Now he's fine, no problem at all, it just took a while to set the new routine and for him to get used to it.

[Olive]

i forgot to say too, we make DD have quiet time, thats ended up been 60-90 mins on her couch, albeit i front of the tv, with her bottle of milk, works for us and i still get 'some' me time

[Mumma2three]

My DD is 3 years 2 months and if she misses her day sleep she will be in bed by 6.45pm. My DD1 had a day sleep until she was 5, so I think my kids need their sleep!!
I was told at one stage by our homeopath to try putting her to bed earlier (this is DD2 when she was 2.5years) and he suggested 6.30pm and that included day sleep (from about 11.30am-1.30pm). xo

[Arimeh]

Yeah DS just made the transition to no day sleep. We decided to cull them out (he would probably still want to have them) because he was staying up wayyyy to late at night - and we couldn't get everything we needed to do get done because we were up entertaining him. So if he has a day sleep - he is up until 9.30pm.

Now - he doesn't have a day sleep - starts getting really tired around 3/4pm? We have learnt NOT to take him for a drive in the car after around 2ish.. lol....

So now our routine is - bath at 4.30 - out by 5.00 (I extend time in the bath as MUCH as possible...)

Then at 5.00 I will make him dinner that he won't bother eating

Then at 6.00 he will have his sippy cup of milk - play with daddy - change into night nappy - in bed by 6.45 - sleep within 2 minutes usually.

He was finding it really hard to go past that 4pm for about a week - now he is fine.

Oh and he turned 2 in January.

[minimatron]

Thanks for all your replies...I know I wrote this ages ago, but we are having trouble. I got Olivia back into the routine of sleeping through the day by going for drives....now I do it most days to get her to sleep, she says, mummy drive nigh nighs!!!!

The problem is now that I have got her back to sleeping during the day, she does not want to go to sleep at night, like yesterday she slept from 2 til 4 pm, then I put her to bed at 9pm and we had screaming matches until 11pm. Shes been doing that for ages and its getting on top of us, especially dh, hes not managing well with her late bed times coz it takes up our time. Shes also now sharing a room with her baby sister for the past 4 nights and thankfully Rebecca has managed to sleep through her screaming fits, but no doubt if it goes on longer she will wake up too.

So my plan is to cut out day sleeps for her all together coz 11pm is way to late to go to sleep and still get up by 730am. She needs more than that as she is so irritable and tantrumy!

So what do I do? Do I give her 15 minute cat nap or just cut it out all together?

Cheers Melissa