Skipping naps then crashing on the couch...

Oh I swear. I can't even rejoice that the fact that they skip naps will make bedtime easier... DD's now fallen asleep on the couch at 5pm the second day in a row, something she's never done until now.

What do I do? Yes, she's the one who was up crying until 9pm last night... and I did wake her up after 10 minutes yesterday. I know she's exhausted and needs the sleep but I don't want bedtime to be a nightmare every night.

How would you handle it? I swear switching out of cribs is going to be the death of me!

 

When we tried to skip naps, the same thing happened to us- kids on the couch crashed out at 5pm. It was at that point that I KNEW they still needed naps.
I havent been following your post so why are you trying to give up naps?
What is naptime & bedtime like ?

I tell my kids they dont have to nap, but they do have to lay down for an hour. I hand them books/babies and send them to their rooms. They nap everytime
I do have to separate them for naps/night time. Otherwise its party central and that didnt start until they turned 2.5 they were always together prior to that age.

 

No, we switched to twin beds and now they don't nap... we really can't separate them either because then we'd have to empty our room too to make it safe (my kids get into everything)... and we don't have the space to put all that stuff somewhere else.

 

Once I put the kids in different rooms I didn't have to put anything away! It was shocking how little they actually got into! Especially considering they destroyed EVERYTHING when they were together!

The only thing I can think of is making sure that during "nap time" they stay in their room and play quietly with toys or books on their bed. There are days mine don't nap but they are in their room every day for nap for at least 2 hours.

 

I don't know, I really don't trust my kids one bit in our room! We could separate their rooms, it would involve moving a lot of furniture around though so we're going to give it a few weeks and we'll see...

 

Another option is to get out of the house to keep them up. I remember bringing my girls to the park before dinner a lot because of this very issue. However, with the cold weather I don't know if you can do that.

Or if they don't like to be separated, threaten that consequence if they don't stay in their beds at nap time. I've had to follow through with this a couple of times, and put one kid in my bed. It usually works out that they'll fall asleep if apart, but they hate it so they usually don't call my bluff on that threat.

 

Maybe this response fits more with another one of your posts - so, sorry if it doesn't make sense when answering your original question here! But have you thought about crib tents? The nightmare you are describing with your toddler bed situation lasted a couple months for us. Next to the newborn phase, it was a close second at being the hardest. Our last resort was to separate them, which involved cleaning out 2 smaller spare bedrooms, painting them and getting them set up as a little girl and little boy room. This took several weeks. In the meantime we put my son back in his crib with a crib tent. I know it's a little pricey to do it for such a short time, but I have to say it was THE BEST short term investment we ever made. We had all reached our breaking point and I wasn't sure who was going to snap first. (My husband, who has the patience of a saint, started taking St. John's Wart - an herbal mood stabilizer during this time!) That first night of sleep and getting my son back on track to not be crabby and throw tantrum after tantrum during the day anymore was absolute heaven. I know yours are a little older than when we went through this, so you may just want to keep them in beds. But it was so worth it for us. Maybe you can do this as you take your time getting the other room ready, and in the mean time you can talk up having their own room, let them pick out some of the decorations for it, explain that they'll be sleeping in separate rooms, so you can ease them into it. And maybe once you ease them in you can go back to the beds again.

My son was a nightmare beyond belief when we first went through the transition. After we moved them to their separate rooms, I couldn't bring myself to give him his bed back for 3-4 months. But we talked about it all along, how he needed to stay in his bed and be a good sleeper to earn it back. Once we tried again in Nov, it was amazing how much easier it was. He did sleep well at that time, and really never got out except to go potty. Naps never changed. Now you may have seen in my recent posts we've had lots of sleep issues lately, so I sound like a crazy person giving advice - but that's related to him just being sensitive and getting overtired and off track easily and being really hard to break him out of it - it's not that he's out of bed partying in his room all night. But his overtired night wakings is another reason the crib/crib tent was a little better for us - because doing CIO when they're in a bed is a nightmare!

Or, maybe if one of your kids is handling the bed ok, just put one in the crib/crib tent until the room is ready. We left my daugher in her bed during the transition and moved her bed right to her new room and she did fine. And they loved their new rooms immediately - they picked the paint colors and I brought in some gender specific stuff for each of them that they didn't have before. I have to say switching to beds has been the hardest transtion for us, but switching to separate rooms has been the easiset!

But I know you said it's just been a few days, so maybe yours will be like most kids and adjust within a couple weeks. My son never did, so it called for drastic measures! Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Unwanted schedule changes and sleep issues make me absolutely insane!

 

I know for sure that one of the bed wouldn't fit a crib tent, so it's not really an option unfortunately... they're almost 3 too so I guess at some point it had to happen anyway. They fell asleep in 35 minutes tonight, so it should help... the problem really is that she only slept 9 hours both nights before today. We'll see.

 

We do separate for naps and DD sleeps in my bed. I dont childproof either. I leave the bedroom door open and threaten her life if she gets off my bed. She's usually asleep pretty quick... give it a try one day and see...

 

She moves too much and our bed is too high, I would be too worried I think

 

They napped 3 hours today :woohoo:

 

I am glad they napped today! YAY!!!
I hope they keep it up!!

 

can you give them dinner a bit earlier? Food always perks mine up!

 

I wish Amy, but dh doesn't get home until 6.30 or 7pm nowadays, which drives me nuts, and I really don't want to have to cook their own meal again!