Shifting nap time schedule

[kacoak]

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?

[lesliefu]

when my daughter had school from 1-4 she would nap after school for 30mins and then sleep around 9pm / 9:30pm at night till around 7am the next day. like you, i was originally worried about her nap (as it was usually right after lunch, 2-3pm) since it would be right in the middle of her school day. i tried different things - like you, but all failed - lunch at 11:30 hoping she'd nap before school - I even drove her around for 1 hour hoping she'd sleep - no she didn't! then I gave up and surprisingly she is cutting the amount of nap herself. the only bad thing was that i had to be flexible about her sleeping at 10pm on some days cause her nap after school was a bit too long!

[kacoak]

So perhaps I should worry less and let her dictate her own nap schedule? My husband said that she will adapt, but I guess I personally don't want her to sleep less since she enjoys it so much! Thanks lesliefu.

[lesliefu]

i think your husband is right kacoak, don't stress too much about it she'll be fine! If your daughter is anything like mine...who also loves her naps will fine a time to nap! BUT when she naps too much at the wrong time (say 1 hour after 5pm) and it gets in the way of bed time...then I don're really want her to enjoy her nap so much because bed time will be delayed (so instead of 8pm it'd be 10pm) and I am totally exhausted by then! :) 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!