Parents with 2-3 yr. olds. Please Read - sleeping habits (average, toddlers)

[mlv311]

We start our bedtime routine (bath, brushing teeth and storytime) with our 2.5 year old by 7:30pm every day and she's asleep by 8:00pm. She wakes up between 7:30am-8:00am and takes a 2 hour nap mid-afternoon.

[Oobie119]

My 2 year old has always been a great sleeper. She goes to bed at 7:45-8pm and sleeps till 8:30-9. She usually takes a nap, even if she just "rests" and doesn't sleep. If she is up a bit earlier than normal and doesn't nap, then she goes to bed aroudn 7:30. She's been sleeping a good 11 hours since she was a baby. We are really blessed..

[5FLgirls]

My almost three year old goes to bed around 7PM and is up around 7AM. She's usually tired and very cranky in the afternoon but refuses to nap making everyone's life miserable. Sometimes, she'll nap in the car when I'm picking her sisters up from school (but then she doesn't want to go to sleep at night). My 15 month old sleeps the same amount during the night but takes a 2-3 hour nap during the day. My 4 & 6 yos sleep from 7:30PM to 6:30AM during school and during the summer they usually sleep from 8PM to 6:30AM.

My kids see a speck of sun through their shades and it's wake up time!

[hypocore]

None of my kids ever slept for 12 hours straight unless they were sick. haha

At 2-3 they were all in one of their 'needs less sleep' phases that meant they usually slept no more than 8 hours at night. If I put any of them to bed before 10 PM, they'd be up again after 2-3 hours refreshed and ready to play for hours on end. So, it was always a much later bedtime for them that worked, completely different from what many have posted here.

[max's mama]

Originally Posted by Rhett_Butler

<sigh> okay, admission time....

My 3-year old daughter usually goes to bed at 10PM, sometimes later. She gets up at 6:30 in the morning and some days doesn't nap..... YES it drives my wife and I crazy as we barely have a waking moment to ourselves.

Heck, as long as I'm spilling the beans here, we also co-sleep. Our daughter loves it of course and it really doesn't affect our lifestyle/intimacy so from what I understand from the books I've read, no harm/no foul there....

Yes, we intend to start getting strict on bedtime stuff before she turns four...

There, I've purged my soul..... I feel a little better..

Don't worry. My son co-sleeps with us still as well. He is almost 3. And he goes to bed closer to 10pm as well. But he does still take a nap during the day for about 2 hours. When I tried dropping a nap for hopes of him going to bed earlier, he would literally fall asleep standing at around 5:00pm, that's when I understood, he still needs his nap. And he wakes up at around 7:00am.

[DD70]

My son was a weird sleeper. He went to sleep around 9 and woke up around 8 and then took a 4 hr nap around 12 and woke up around 3 or 4 pm. Now that he is 11 he goes to sleep around 9 (what is it with this hr)lol. wakes up around 7 and on weekends will still take a mini nap around one hr.
Some children have a hard time regulating their lil internal time clocks...sometimes they outgrow it with age sometimes they never do.

[Yankeefan111669]

My daughter used to nap from 1-4 pm and then go to bed at 8:30 pm, but now she naps from 12-2 and gives me a hard time going to sleep at 8 pm. She calls me for at least a half hour. Maybe I should put her to sleep at 8:30 pm still. Any ideas are appreciated. She wakes up at 7 am.

[glastron_79]

My 2 yr old goes to bed between 7:30-8pm, sleeps all night and wakes around 7-ish in the am. If the day before was exhausting (swimming or a long afternoon at the playground/park or playing at her energetic twin boy cousins' home), she'll go to bed earlier and maybe sleep a little later.

When she was with the childcare lady in her home, she napped around 10 in the morning (1 to 1.5 hrs) and usually had an afternoon catnap.

Now that my husband's laid off and home with her, she takes one late morning nap around 11 and wakes around 12:30 or 1. Same on weekends. I almost never take her out until she's had her nap. Only for unusual circumstances will I skip a morning nap, go out to do whatever, then come home and see if she'll nap later.

[NYMD67]

I have a 3 year old and a 6 year old. My 6 year old has JUST started sleeping through the nights. We have always had a consistent bedtime routine but it never kept her asleep without waking at least once a night. She was also never a napper, I never understood when others would say that their little ones slept for 2 hours in the afternoon. Mine took cat naps but they weren't consistent either.
I read every single book out there on how to get your child to sleep and with my oldest,nothing worked. Going to school all day has done the trick!

As far as my 3 year old, she too, has a consitent bedtime routine (they both are in bed no later than 8:30pm each night) and is a much better sleeper. She does still wake up once in awhile,but it isn't every night. She has stopped taking naps now,but did take about 1 1/2 hr naps each day.

I honestly think it depends on the child,but that is just in my experience.....

[nuala]

My kids had identical periods of fighting naps. (They are 19 months apart). The period started at around 3 years old, and lasted for a year (well, with the yongest being 3y8m it's still going on), at which point they get rid of the day nap completely.

Within that year, you never know when they'd have a nap. Sometimes no nap whatsoever, then the next day a nap anywhere from 2-4, 3-5, 5-6:30. Because of those late naps, our house life was skewed to "late evenings, late mornings".

This month though, the 5yo started going to school, and that means getting up at 6:30 am. Everyone seems to be woken up by 7am - and that makes wonderfully tired kids by 8pm. Our life has changed to "early bedtime, early mornings" seemingly overnight.