Almost 4 and does not want daytime sleep HELP

[LouLou]

Hi all,
Was wondering if anyone can give me some tips. My son (almost 4) has always been a great sleeper day & night, but in the last week and a half he does not wish to sleep. I have tried incentives (yes bribes) and all sorts but it looks as though his daytimesleep is over. I was wondering what anyone else did when their child reached this stage. I know he will go to his room - but he does not always remain quiet - which results in my daughter (8mths) being disturbed from her sleep. Any help or ideas would be appreciated...
Louise

[shellbell]

oh loulou, i reckon you are lucky to have made it to 4 :D . my daughter decided at a bit over 2 that she wasn't going to sleep in the day. sometimes yes, but often no. even now, we still put her in her room at the same time every day and leave her for a couple of hours. if she sleeps, great, but if she doesn't, look out. talk about cranky ! we've found that leaving her in her room for that bit of "quiet" time (haha) is the best we can do. its not as if you can force them to sleep

sorry i can't be of more help. i know how much it sucks

[Graeme]

Hi

I'm afraid I'm with Michelle. Our daughter (who is a great sleeper) gave up her afternoon sleep when she was three. She will occassionally have one now if she is particularly tired or if we are doing something exciting that night and she wants to be able to stay up.

I suspect your little oasis of sleep might have gone. :( Not sure what you can do to stop him disturbing your daughter. Can he play up the other end of the house? We used to go down the back and we had a monitor so we could hear the little one.

Good luck
Graeme

PS Talking about a good sleeper. When Jaz was little she used to love pretend to go to sleep (still does). She used to pretend to go to sleep in a variety of positions and she used to say "I'm sleeping around" ;)

[LouLou]

Thanks for the replies, I guess I was not ready to give up the possible chance of at least a 20min break during the day. I will miss it though. Not sure what I will do about the noise factor as his room is right next door to hers. Here's hoping that quietly reading books might be the answer - though yesterday for some bizzare reason he decided to rip one of his baby books up - don;t really know where this same from as he love to read books, might be a jelously thing to avoid his sister reading them. Thanks again, at least i know I am not the only one who is going through this and guess I'll deal with it day by day and hope for the best.

[mumof2girls]

LouLou

By this age most children aren't sleeping during the day, maybe you can tell him that if he doesn't want to sleep then he needs to rest on his bed and maybe read books, or maybe you can have him drawing or some type of quiet activity rather than have a sleep so you are both still having some quiet time just not the sleep.

As for ripping the book, he is old enough to ask why and give you an answer why he did it and maybe taking his books offf him for the rest of the day would be enough of a consequence to stop this behaviour.


Good Luck with whatever you choose

Kay

[camstar]

Hi,
the only thing I can think of is getting him involved in putting your daughter to sleep, teach him your methods for getting her to sleep and have him "help". It kinda works on the theroy of a kid thats worked really hard on a sand castel is less likely to want to smash down their hard work! No garentee but you never know. Another tip I would give is explaining why you get them both to sleep "you seem so much happier and have more energy to play and your sister won't scream as much cause she gets so sad when shes tired" 4 year olds love being treated old enough for explanations (the "why"age). I've found kids love it when it's all about them, when they figure out the things that aren't they'll do what they can to create new things about them good or bad they don't care. Funny little things aren't they. Good luck hope this helps. :)

[lforest]

Hi, my 20 month old is REALLY irregular in her day sleeps. I try to tire her out in the morning, even if it means I get tired to. Now that she usually doesn't sleep we call it 'quiet time'. Although she is noisy for most of it she can end up quietly talking to herself or reading books. My 3 months sleeps like the dead so she has to shout in his ear to wake him up. Are you able to get the younger to sleep somewhere farther away?

[LouLou]

Thanks to all who replied
It's a week later and things have calmed down a bit. I have set some new rules regarding sleep time with rewards or consequences regarding what happens. The good news he has had a couple of days where he has had a sleep. I am also making sure we are out for at least 2 hours in the morning so he gets the chance to run around and burn some of his endless energy.
Cheers
Louise