Three Facts about Dropping the Last Nap
Oh, the nap! It’s not always easy to make toddler naps happen, but once they do, they are the one period of daytime relaxation for most toddler parents! Most toddlers start taking just one consolidated nap sometime after their first birthday and continue doing so until at least the age of 2. It often feels like just when naps are starting to happen regularly, they start to go away! It can be hard to figure out when your toddler is actually ready to drop the nap versus when they are just demonstrating typical toddler resistance, so here are three facts about the last nap transition to help you figure it out and decide what to do next:
1) The age of the dropped nap varies.
When your child was a baby or early toddler, you could predict with some certainty when they would drop and consolidate naps, and that certainty helped you know what nap resistance was most likely due to. Although most kids drop the last nap between their 3rd and 4th birthdays, it’s also normal perfectly normal for a two-year-old to stop napping, and for some kids to still be napping at five. When it comes to an older toddler potentially dropping the last nap, this variability in timing paired with toddler’s typical resistance to things can make it difficult to know the reason for skipped or resisted naps. Which leads me to….
2) Signs of the dropped nap include fighting sleep at nap time, bedtime, or even skipping naps on a regular basis.
If your child use to drift off quickly and easily for naps and suddenly doesn’t seem tired, takes a long time to fall asleep (or even skips the nap completely) or starts fighting naptime, this might mean that they truly aren’t tired enough to fall asleep. Same goes for bedtime. If your child is suddenly fighting bedtime, or just lays awake for hours after being put in bed, this might mean it’s time to drop the nap so that they’re tired enough to fall asleep at night. If they napped mid-day and didn’t truly need it, they aren’t going to be sleepy at bedtime. Of course, this is easier to notice when your child has been napping or going to sleep at bedtime easily, which is one (of many) reason to get your child sleeping well!
3) Your child will probably still have lower energy levels during their former nap time.
This creates a great solution for parents who still would like the mid-day break that a nap used to provide: quiet time. Since your child will likely be stillest during this time, you can designate an hour or two of what was formerly nap time as “quiet time”. What that looks like is up to you: playing quietly with toys in their room, looking at books, or screen time.
When you’re pretty sure it’s time to drop the nap, what do you do? Well, that will depend on your child. Sometimes a kid will stop cold turkey one day and be fine. Others might still nap occasionally, but stop doing so on a regular basis. You can expect the transition to last for weeks, and if it lasts longer than that, you could try cutting the nap out completely for a week or two and see if your child adjusts to making it to bed time and consolidates sleep then. Some kids will still occasionally take a nap if they need it and this might go on for even longer than a matter of weeks.
So, what’s the take-home? Dropping the last nap is a highly individual transition and going to require some flexibility. The transition might be a challenge, but you’ve got this! If naps aren’t your only area of sleep struggles and you want to find out what you can do to change them, take my free 3-minute quiz: The Positive & Practical Sleep Assessment. I created this quiz to help parents find the likely cause of their child’s sleep issues and give them a simple starting point for addressing them.