What to do when your baby skips a nap and how to prevent overtiredness
You were counting down the minutes until your child went down for a nap, and then that nap time came and went and your child completely skipped their nap. It kind of sucks as much for the parents as it does for the child. But, I’m going to tell you exactly what to do when your child skips their nap.
What to do when your baby skips a nap and how to prevent overtiredness
The first thing you wanna do is just take a deep breath. I know it sucks and can feel like it’s going to ruin your day, and maybe your child is going to be extra cranky that day, but it’s only one day; we can fix this.
The second thing that you want to do is to kind of calculate in your head what a shorter wait window will look like before bedtime. If your child generally takes one nap in the middle of the day and they completely skip it, you’re looking at wanting to do bedtime 30 to 60 minutes earlier.
Next thing that you want to do is going to happen the next morning. You’re going to think that your child needs to sleep in that morning in order to make up for the nap that they skipped yesterday, and there is a little bit of truth to it, but also a little bit of false, so you want to only let your child sleep for 30 three minutes longer than usual. You don’t want them to sleep any later than that because then you’re going to just get in the same routine of skipping naps, going to bed early and sleeping in later and you definitely don’t want to do that.
The next thing that you want to do is keep your child’s nap on schedule. A lot of parents might think, “oh my gosh, my kid is trying to drop naps too soon.” but that’s not the case. Sometimes sleep is off, because we’re humans, not robots. If your child has an off day and they didn’t take the nap that they generally do, try again tomorrow.
If this is something that has been going on for two weeks or longer, then we may want to visit your child’s schedule and see where we can make changes. Anything lasting longer than two weeks is not just a sleep regression, it’s probably a sign that it’s time to make changes.
The next thing that I wanted to discuss is that if your child is on three naps per day, it’s completely normal and completely acceptable to fully assist your baby for the third nap; this can be a stroller nap, it can be baby wearing, it can be in a rocking chair. The only purpose of this third nap is to take some sleep pressure off so that your child can make it all the way to the next wake window before bedtime. Your child should not be expected to sleep independently all three naps of the day.
Now, if you’re unsure of how many naps your child might need or how much daytime sleep they should be having, then grab my free baby sleep guide, because it’s going to have a full wake time chart for the first full year of your child’s life so that you know exactly when and how much sleep your child needs. Match this wake time chart with what your child’s schedule currently looks like and make adjustments as needed. If everything else sounds like it’s on track and everything in the baby sleep guide is something that you’ve already been doing, then I want you to watch this video, https://youtu.be/LAUxVYB43Xw, and check out crib hour; this is going to be a strategy that is going to help your child stretch their naps longer and not skip them.
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Missy Yandow
Pediatric Sleep Consultant
Potty Training Coach
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Cheers!
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