A colleague is having a really hard time of it with her 18month old boy. She is absolutely shattered and last week she crashed her car on way to work, she said it was due to the sun, but i think it was because she is so tired. I am her supervisor and i am letting her away with alot because she is not functioning well, we work in childcare so she needs to be on the ball. The reason she is so tired is her wee boy doesnt sleep. He sleeps from 8pm until 11/12 and then he thinks its play time and thats him up until 5am when he has and hr before his mum gets him up to go to the childminders. He has his breakfast at childminders and sleeps from 8am until 12 and then 3-5. What can i suggest she tries, she has not tried any sleep training and she is at her wits end. I know you girls will have some advice and maybe even experienced the same.
Honestly - it will not be fun for her childminder but she needs to keep him awake for longer at childcare - I would suggest a nap from 8 - 9am then wake him up and then another nap from 1-3pm... Eventually I would suggest he should just be having 1 nap around lunchtime but it might need to be done in stages. He simply doesn't need that much sleep during the day, but not changing anything - NOTHING will change!! He will be miserable and grumpy but only for a couple of weeks. It is definitely do-able as lots of kids have jetlag and recover. To be honest, I wouldn't bother with the extra half an hour thing in this case as it will take forever. However the childminder might not be too keen - as I imagine she has a very easy job right now with all that sleep during the day!! But it's not sleep training, simple time zone adjustment, if she thinks about it like that she might feel better about it
Far far too much day time sleep. Needs to switch night and day sleep patterns around. He is napping at night and having night sleep through the day.
I agree he's got his day and nights mixed up. Has she got any holidays to use up? A week or 2 maybe? If she has time off work she could start the training herself so she knows its being done (as I wouldn't think the childminder would try hard enough at first IMO anyway) and then the childminder could continue?
He needs to be awake during the day and sleep at night - right now he has it backwards. She needs to begin with the childminder keeping him up during the day. It's not going to be an easy task and he is going to be grumpy but it's the only way to fix the issue. He needs to not be given the option of anything longer then a 1-2 hour nap just once or twice in the day. He needs to be awake the rest of the time so he is tired and will sleep through the night. I am glad you're being understanding and cutting her some slack.
Wow, way too much day sleep. My oldest switched to 1 nap a day around 13 months old and usually its only for a couple of hours in the early afternoon. They need to start really shortening his naps and then try moving it to one nap in the afternoon. He has already had his rest all day, so that is why he is playing and awake all night.
I can only echo what the other ladies have said, that is far too much daytime sleep for his age. My LO is 19 months and he has one nap a day of two hours, between 12.30 and 2.30. The childminder is going to have to change his routine. Firstly I would suggest that each nap is shortened. It's going to be tough to change this and you can't do it all in one go. So I would think keep each nap to an hour or so. Let him have 8am until 9am, maybe 10am at a push. Then let him have another hour in the afternoon. At his age he can happily be awake for 5 hours prior to bedtime. On the first few days of this he will hopefully start to sleep more overnight. When that starts to happen, the childminder can work on pushing that morning nap back gradually to become a lunchtime one, thereby dropping to one nap a day
There is a sleep regression at 18 months, but... I agree with the other ladies! That kid is having FAR to much daytime sleep. The child minder needs to keep him up. He's in a terrible cycle - he's overtired during the day from sleeping poorly at night and then he's undertired at bedtime from sleeping so much during the day. It needs to be broken ASAP. An 18 month old should be taking one nap. I'd aim for noon/1pm. Yes, he will be fussy in the morning the first day the child minder tries this because he's tired and not used to it, but she needs to distract him. Going outside is ideal. Sunlight actually supresses the production of melatonin and will keep him awake. Good luck! Hope your friend gets some rest soon.
Agree with what everyone else is saying, but she also needs to make things very borIng at night so there isn't anything worth staying up for - no playing or tv, only very dim lights. Again, he will probably complain at first but he will eventually realise its better to be awake during the day x
