Appropriate Discipline/ Response When My Son Resists Naptime or Bedtime?

I would sing to him, tuck him in and say he has to be quiet in his bed for x time. When I gave up on regular naps was when DD simply wasn't sleeping even after 30 or 45 minutes of down time (she quit napping somewhere between 2.5 and 3). If he gets up (be it naps or night), say "It is time for bed" and quietly walk him back to his bed. Over and over and over. Little interaction. Shut the door. Leave. He'll eventually get that he needs to stay there. When my DD was 2ish, I got a lot better about her bedtime routine and it really helped.

I don't think a spanking would help any. Just persistence.

And if the doc gives you a bad appointment time, negotiate for a better one.

By two and a half my boys had given up napping. Most of the kids I know gave up napping by that age. If he is having that much trouble falling asleep it is likely because he is ready to stop napping. Instead of putting him to bed for a nap in the afternoon try making it quiet time. Put on a movie for him, or let him play with quiet toys or book in his room.

Sounds like he's done with naps. My youngest gave up naps at 2.5 and we just moved his bedtime from 8 to 7-7:30. Skip the nap, wear him out, and put him to bed early:)

I have never had a child nap past 2. I've always held to the fact that if they aren't tired, they aren't tired and trying to force them only makes it worse. What that meant was an earlier bedtime. This isn't about rewarding a behavior, just like us they ebb and flow when it comes to sleep and how much.

If you find yourself frustrated...stop. It's not worth it, pop a movie on in the living room and snuggle up. You, him and if the baby is awake, the baby. Many of my naps were with a 2 year sitting in the crock of my legs while I dozed in and out. I had a baby gate up, and a baby proofed living room, even if they got down I knew they were safe.

At 2.5 years old, he may just be done w/ naps. Mine stopped at 2. Just move up his bedtime to an earlier hour, calculating how much overall sleep he needs based on his age and then set the time. After our daughter was finished with naps, her bedtime was 6 p.m. for quite awhile. Not kidding. Really nice in the evenings! :)

First, I wouldn't call it "misbehaving." When you can't turn your brain off at night and have insomnia, do you call it misbehaving? The only issue is that as an adult, we have more appropriate ways of reacting when we can't sleep, such as laying there thinking of the thousands of things we need to do/accomplish.

Second, my second stopped napping around that age. It would take us a LOT of effort and around an hour or more to "make" her take a nap. We stopped trying. She's doing fine and we're happier (although the midday down time was pretty nice for us). For reference, our first took naps until she was 5yo. Different kiddos.

Change tactics and make this "quiet and play in your room for an hour" time. Maybe he'll fall asleep, maybe he won't.

He may do better with what we call "quiet time."

It really helps if his scheduled nap time is not so disrupted.
Children thrive on schedules. I know in real life this is not always possible, but if you can stay on a daily schedule a lot of this sleep situation would change.

The other thing is that young children have a tremendous amount of energy everyday.

They need to be able to run, yell, jump climb for extended times at least 2 times a day.

If your child was in day care.. he would be playing outside in the morning for at least 1 hour on a playground.. Usually it is 1 and a half hours and on great weather days sometimes they would have snack outside and extend outside play to 2 hours.. Again in the afternoons they would play outside.

Your son needs to release all of his energy.. or he will be a whirling dervish. So much energy, he cannot sleep on command.

So what we came up with on rainy days in our home was "quiet time". If our daughter would stay in her bed, playing quietly or looking a books for a set amount of time, she was not required to sleep. Her door was kept shut, quiet music might be played to block out the neighborhood sounds.

Make the routine.
Wake up, breakfast, outside play, snack on the run while you run errands.

Come home, wipe him down, have a quiet lunch.. no TV.. then quiet time or nap.

Wake up, snack on the go.. run errands, then active play, come in, make and have quiet dinner, NO TV..

Put him in a warm quiet bath.. rub him down really good. no horseplay.. PJ's.. Read books quietly.. not a time to engage son into conversations or funny sounds getting him riled up.. Towards the end of the story, begin reading slower and slower. Then sleep for the night.

My son napped till age 3 but my daughter stopped napping at age 2.5. She is 3.5 now and does just fine without a nap. In fact if she does nap (which happens every other month or so) accidentally we cannot get that child to fall asleep till about 11pm which totally sucks. If it were me I'd stop naps and perhaps just tell him he is allowed to have quiet time for an hour and put in a movie he can watch while snuggling up with a blanket. This will give you a bit of much needed quiet time. A lot of kids stop napping at an earlier age.

Get him up early in the morning. By no later than 8 if he's not up already by then. Keep him active. Then lunch and down for the quiet time by noon. Keep quiet time relatively short. Hour or hour and a half. The hatred for thing will be a stress for only a couple days. He will get it. remove the toys and child proof it. Good luck.

Wanted to say I'm with gamma g on this also. A swift swat on the behind works wonders.

You do know you can say no when a doc tells you an appointment time right? You do NOT have to take the appointment they say. You can say "Sorry, that's nap time and I have to have an earlier appointment. When do you have a 9am or 10am I can take?".

He is too young to give up his nap. If he goes to bed earlier he'll just get up earlier and then your day will start full time with even less sleep. I swat the kids when they don't lay still. I give them plenty of warnings though. We still lay down with the 6 year old, it's sort of a special time.

If he's truly just too tired then turn on the TV to something that is not an action adventure show and turn it to a volume where you have to pay attention to hear it. He'll drop off as soon as his body calms down.

Then there are the times when hubby has worked for 2 hours to get him asleep and he's still wide awake. Then he brings him to me. I turn on the TV to something quiet and lay down on the couch with him. Sometimes he's asleep in 10 minutes and sometimes he's still awake at 2am. He is not doing this to be bad or anything, he's just not sleepy.

My son dropped his afternoon naps at around this age. Every kid is different.
I'd say, if he's 'hyper' it may be one of two things: he's either ready to give up the nap OR he's overtired, which can manifest in a child looking 'hyper'.

Giving up a naptime isn't a reward for not-tired behavior. You could try starting nap a half-hour earlier (moving that time up) or try just letting go of the naps and enjoying an earlier bedtime. Please understand that at 2.5, he doesn't know that he's 'misbehaving' at naptime. I worked with toddlers for years-- you cannot make a kid sleep who doesn't want to. Making them even be quiet is really hard. You could try "you play in here 'til the timer goes ding" each day at naptime, and start with shorter amounts of time until he learns to trust that the timer will go 'ding'. It's an investment, sure, but it eventually pays off. Start with 10-15 minutes of 'you play alone, now, in your room' and move it up a few more minutes each day. You can also keep taking him back to his room "time to play by yourself for a few minutes-- you can come out when the timer goes ding".

Please believe me, if he's tired, he'll eventually wind down and take a nap. He may go between nap/no nap for a while, still. I just realized early on that fighting a kid to make them nap is futile. So, go for the quiet time and you can tell him "You can play in your room or you go to sleep." *That* is the choice.

My son stopped napping at 2 years old. I had a 7 month old baby and was miserable with lack of sleep, but he was over it. I started using the baby's nap time as his TV time. I admit it - Bad mommy and all.... but I needed the rest or I was going to go insane, and it was obvious he was no longer going to nap. I would turn on Yo Gabba Gabba or whatever was on and catch a few minutes of downtime while he watched a show or two. Helped to keep both of us sane. He was also then much more tired at bedtime. He just didn't need the time to wind down that he did before dropping his nap. Bedtime moved from 8 (which was actually closer to 8:30 or 9 with his procrastination) to 7. AWESOME.

My daughter napped much better than he ever did, but still dropped hers at just over 3.

Keep your sanity mama. Get him out of your room, into his own bed, and stop fighting it all so much.

Good luck!

I would put him down on the mattress put up a baby gate that he cannot get over tell him firmly it is nap time and leave. Do not go back in there for his fit. tend to your baby or whatever it is you want to do. Every day the fit will get shorter and shorter and then he will be napping on time.

Book:

He's doing it for attention.

Do not force him to nap. He can sit quietly for a certain period - but if he doesn't want to sleep - do NOT force it. It will only cause more trouble.

Some kids stop napping at 2 and 3...I know...I know...young - but that's the way they are. I was lucky - my kids didn't stop napping until 6!! YAHOO!!

Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. He WANTS this battle with you. As long as you battle him - he has your attention. If you continue to say "enough" or stop...he is winning...

Tell him that he needs to be quiet. If he ramps up and is LOOKING for attention - ignore his behavior. When he sees that he is not getting what he wants, he will calm down. Tell him he does NOT have to sleep. Tell him that he DOES have to be quiet.

If you keep him in his bed until he falls asleep - no matter how long it takes? You are going to make his bed punishment - I thought you wanted him OUT of your bed and sleeping on his own? Quiet time.

Good luck!

Book-

Have you gotten that rest you need? Sounds like you are running on low batteries. 2 or three days of long naps or several nights of someone else on bed duty would do you all some good.

As for the actual question-
Hubs taught me that a delayed nap d/n need to equal a delayed bedtime. Sleep requirements are cumulative. Our kid sleeps and self soothes well (we did Ferber, it worked for us), but if his nap were to go from 4-6 instead of from 1-2, he'd still get and accept an 8pm bedtime.

good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

At my son's former daycare, they expected the children to lay down quietly. Just tell him it's "quiet time" and he needs to stay quiet, not necessarily go to sleep, or you will have another battle.

All 3 of my kids (2 boys & 1 girl) were completely done with naps right around 2 years old...so it is possible that your on might be done as well. In the very least, I would try or just quiet time. Can you tell him to play quietly on his bed? That he doesn't need to sleep but that he does have to Kay quietly and look at books or do puzzles or something?

If your lil' guy really is tired and not ready to give up naps but is just fighting hem, the following might work b/c he might fall asleep by default??~When I had a baby (all my kids are 2 years apart) and the older one was done with naps but I needed quiet time, I would make them all comfy cozy in my bed and plop in a DVD of some cartoon...they were always quiet and enthralled with the show b/c they didn't watch hardly any TV at that age...so watching a cartoon for 'quiet time' was perfect for us! Might that work for you guys?

Sorry -- you've got your hands full!

I don't think you can really discipline your way into naptime. Maybe, if a child's whole life is structured by punishments and the prospect of punishments, maybe it'd work, but for most kids, discipline will just rile them up more.

My two ideas for you are:

1. Quiet time. Don't call it nap time. Just declare that the hours between, say, 1 and 2 pm are National Nap and Quiet Time. At this time, all kids take off their shoes and listen to a nice, quiet story. Said kids then have the option of either taking a nap or coloring quietly.

That's a great strategy for a kid who's in the process of giving up his nap but still needs some quiet time to recharge.

But, if all else fails, my absolute fail-safe recommendation is to just put the kids in their carseats, pick a long, quiet, boring road, and drive.

Until about 5 1/2, my son had random bouts of insomnia, and that's what I used to do: Randomly drive toward Princeton at 8:45 pm until he finally conked out.

If he were my son, flopping around and singing to the top of his lungs at nighttime in MY room, he'd be in his OWN room so fast, his head would spin. And he could cry in there for a good long time before I'd let him back on the mattress beside my bed.

You haven't made him pay for his "sins" yet, mama. Make him.

As far as the nap is concerned, he should be in HIS room. Are you sitting in the room with him? If he lays there quietly, then you sit with him. If he doesn't, you leave and he can NOT come out of the room for an hour. If he doesn't sleep, too bad for him. The natural consequence is that he is tired later, and the next morning, he HAS to get up at the normal time. NO late sleeping.

You just haven't held his feet to the fire. SO WHAT if you make sleep negative for him? This is non-negotiable, that everyone in this house gets to go to sleep. Stop coddling him and BE the bad guy. If you don't, you may end up in the hospital with exhaustion.

In closing, I want to remind you that when he first came along, he was FIRST. He has to move over and allow his sibling to be first now. That means you have to MOVE HIM. Just do it and stop allowing him to run the bedtime.

Good luck!

Forget quiet time! Put him in front of the TV when baby naps. You need some alone time! If the two year old is tired enough, he will fall asleep.

A earlier bedtime worked great with my two oldest. My second kid actually started getting more sleep when we stopped nap, and I loved the earlier bedtime--it gave me alone time with the oldest.

Enforcing quiet time is like enforcing nap time -- a waste of your time. This is where the TV comes into play. PBS has some great shows on in the early afternoon, perfect early literacy stuff.

I would try to give him a quiet time instead of nap. Let him know he needs to lay down and be quiet for a certian amount of time. My youngest did not like naps at that age. I would not fight the naps. If he absolutly wont do that find a kid friendly show that will keep him quiet while the baby naps don't worry about a "nap"

Our son was always afraid he's miss something during nap time but he really needed the nap.
With one, it was easy enough to nap with him.
We'd all lay down together (thinking he'd fall asleep and we'd get up quietly) and most of the time we ALL ended up napping.
I usually woke up first.
I've got some great pictures of son and Dad napping together!

No one can fall asleep if they are moving and talking with their eyes open. I used to tell my kids to lay still, be quiet (no talking or singing) and close their eyes.
That being said, if he is fighting you so much perhaps he is not ready for a nap or bed at night. I would not fight over this. Then again my kids bed time was 11:00 until they were school age.

this is tough cause at that age mine were still in a crib.

I think I would gate the bedroom. take out all toys and anything else you can so he cant play with fun things.

you really cant discipline him cause he is so young and he doesn't understand. and this is a big transition... he has to get used to the new routine.. but do not give up on naps.. he is way too young.

We had quiet time. You could read or play with quiet toys, but you had to be in your bed.
LBC

If he knows you are going to make him stay there until he falls asleep, he will fight it more. I think you should just do the quiet time so he doesn't have any anxiety over it; he may fall asleep better if you don't require him to go to sleep.

My daughter always got real hyper right before falling asleep. That's how I knew that she would be out soon - she would start flopping around and kicking like you describe. It was her last ditch effort at staying awake