Third Nap Is Absent, Too Short, Too Long, or at the Wrong Time
The third nap, around 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., is variable:
It may be short, long, o&absent.
It usually disappears by nine months of age.
If it is a long nap, your child might be able to go to bed later at night.
But if it is too long, the very late bedtime might become associated with bedtime battles because your child is way past his biological time for evening sleep.
So either shorten (if your child is way under nine months) or eliminate (if your child is nine months or older) the third nap.
Even a brief, baby power nap lasting twenty to forty minutes late in the afternoon or early in the evening might interfere with an early bedtime.
So if you are struggling with bedtimes, consider eliminating this third mini nap and try for an earlier bedtime.
Sometimes, around nine to twelve months of age, a child falls asleep around 5:30 p.m.
and is up around 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., then is up playing with parents for a few hours until 10:00 p.m., and finally goes back to sleep but does not sleep well at night.
The parents think the child is taking a third nap at 5:30 p.m.
Afternoon Nap Is Absent, Too Short, Too Long, or at the Wrong Time
The afternoon nap usually lasts until about three years of age and gradually disappears after the third birthday.
If the afternoon nap disappears too soon, your child may become overtired in the late afternoon and have difficulty falling asleep at night. Either reestablishing the afternoon nap (if your child is substantially under age three) or moving the bedtime earlier (if your child is substantially over age three) should help. If the afternoon nap persists in much older children the bedtime might progressively get later and later, causing bedtime battles to develop. Eliminating the afternoon nap will permit an earlier bedtime and help erase bedtime battles.
Bad timing is a common cause of problems associated with the afternoon nap. If the afternoon nap is too early, way before noon, because of a too-short morning nap, it will not be as restorative and your child might be way overtired by late afternoon. One mother said her son was a “French fry” by the end of the day because he was crispy. Under nine months of age, this might lead to a late or long third nap that causes the bedtime to become too late. If the afternoon nap is too late, way after 2:00 p.m., it may interfere with an early bedtime.
Morning Nap Is Absent, Too Short, Too Long, or at the Wrong Time
The morning nap develops at three to four months of age in 80 percent of children and a few months later in 20 percent of children who had colic. Correcting a too-early wake-up time or a too-late bedtime might be needed.
Sometimes the morning nap is short because that is all the sleep your child can get at that time—that is, your child is a short napper. About 20 percent of children between about six and twenty-one months always have short naps in the morning and afternoon, no matter what parents do. Between six and nine months of age, they may appear to be too short because the child requires many short naps, or “snaps,” throughout the day and often appears tired. As long as the bedtime is early, by nine or twelve months, most of these children are taking fewer and longer naps and no longer appear tired. I think that most of these short nappers are those who had colic when younger.
The most common cause of an absent or a too-short morning nap is an interval of wakefulness that is too long between the wake-up time and the beginning of the nap.
For the child under four months of age, sometimes starting the morning nap after only one hour of wakefulness allows the child to be soothed back to sleep before she becomes overtired.