Sleeping FAQ: 18-24 months

My daughter aged nearly two years has started to have inconsistent naps at lunch time, often remaining awake in her cot chatting for 1.5 hours. This began after a period of illness when she lost her appetite. Following the afternoons when she does sleep well, she will not settle to sleep until 8pm in the evening and, on the afternoons when she doesn’t sleep well, she is a total nightmare as she is so irritable. Her habit of hitting me is escalating despite my efforts to resolve it. 

I am at my wits' end. I wouldn’t mind her dropping the nap if she wasn’t a complete horror in the afternoon as a result. She looks exhausted and definitely needs this sleep. I am due my next baby in 6 weeks and need to get it sorted. Do you think this is just a phase? What should I be aiming for at this age? I admit she might not be getting the exercise she needs due to the weather and my pregnancy.  However, yesterday morning she had two hours at a soft play place and ran herself ragged - but still she did not nap even though she was desperate and told me all afternoon that she was tired!

My daughter takes three good meals a day and drinks cow’s milk from a beaker.
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My 18mth daughter has all of a sudden started to resist being put down for her lunchtime nap. She is ready for this nap as she seems quite tired at lunchtime. I have bought lunchtime forward to 11.45pm so that she goes down at 12.30pm. Grandparents have no problem with this nap, it is just at home she screams and cries and is difficult to settle.
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My daughter of 19mths has always settled with no problem by 1pm for two solid hours, sometimes slightly longer, always woken by 3pm. Suddenly she stopped sleeping at lunchtime and is also taking longer to settle at night. She is in bed just before 7pm and sometimes still awake chatting but not crying at 8pm. She seems to be awake earlier than normal in the mornings although not much before 6.45. Until this began to happen my daughter had always slept until 7am or mostly later, sometimes 7.30/8am, with the two hours at lunchtime. The worse she sleeps in the day, the worse it is at bedtime; although she is not waking at night, she is waking earlier in the mornings. I believe this could be since we paid a day trip to family where she was settled in her travel cot for lunchtime nap, she would not sleep and cried hysterically for 1.5 hours despite cuddles from myself and husband, she eventually fell asleep on my husband's chest which is the first time since she was days old that she has not been put down and fallen asleep on her own. This was a week ago. I truly believe she is overtired although she is not miserable; she is also eating lots more than normal so possibly a growth spurt. I am 17 weeks pregnant and need to rest at lunchtime! Today she did not have a nap at all just chatted from 12.50 till 2.15 when I went and got her. Other days she is settling around 1.30pmand I wake her at 3pm.

My daughter eats three meals a day, having her protein meal at lunchtime. This is something such as beef stew and dumplings, with mixed vegetables. After this she will have cheese biscuits spread with cheese spread. For tea she will eat pasta with a sauce followed by yoghurt. All her food is home made. My daughter rarely has biscuits or sweet things. She does not really eat fruit apart from the occasional piece of banana but loves her vegetables. She drinks around 11ozs of milk in the day and about a beaker and half of water in total, given throughout the day.
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Ella is one year and eight months old. The problem is that she is only sleeping 30-40 minutes at her lunchtime nap. The knock-on effect is that she is waking earlier in the mornings too. She also often doesn't want supper as she is too tired. She is very run down from lack of sleep and subsequently keeps getting various illnesses. She currently has terrible conjunctivitis and a cough and cold. I always put her down at 1pm and she used to sleep for about 1.5 hours but not since the beginning of January. I have tried putting her down half an hour earlier or later but it doesn't make any difference. She definitely needs more sleep as she often falls asleep in the car at the end of the day. I have tried leaving her to cry to go back to sleep but she just shouts for me. I have tried going into her room and telling her to go back to sleep but this just makes her hysterical. I'm not sure why this is happening. She was a "contented baby" from 7 weeks old, slept through the night at 14 weeks and we haven't looked back since. We did go on holiday over Christmas and the daytime sleep has been bad since we got back. Her room is dark so that's not the problem.
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My daughter has for some months began waking during the night, never at the same times, for anything up to two hours. She doesn't cry but she talks and sometimes shouts out. Sometimes we will go in to her and tell her to shush and go back to sleep or we just leave her. This happens regardless of whether she has had a good/bad lunchtime nap and regardless of whether she talks for a while before falling to sleep at night. It also doesn't matter if has eaten a lot during the day or little. She is always in bed by 6.45pm. Her afternoon nap is rarely more than 1hr - 1hr20. She settles for this nap at 12.30am.
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My son only sleeps through the night (he will wake at approx 6am) when he is about to experience a cold or virus (usually 2 days prior). The doctor has stated he is prone to allergies etc, minor illness appears to be quite common approx every 5 weeks.
He wakes on average 3 times per night (Until recently it could be 6/7). He eats very little although quite often. He refuses meat, eats little fruit and veg [I have therefore introduced Innocent smoothies] and has little interest in food in general.
He is an extremely active child, 'a hard work baby' as his grandma calls him, rarely sits still, always on the go. He attends nursery 3 afternoons per week (1.30pm - 6pm) and is regarded as the most active child there; others appear sedate in comparison. I work 30 hours per week, childcare is shared with grandma. I always put him down for his morning nap, although two nights per week, grandma completes the bedtime routine: bath, change, bottle, bed approx 7.30pm (this appears to make no difference to his waking night).
On a typical day he will eat a slice of apple,1/4 piece of toast, few mouthfuls of yoghurt, 1/2 slice of bread, 1/2 oz cheese, 4 grapes, 10 organic puffs, slices of orange, sausage roll, raisins, 1/2 slice bread, 1/4 cereal bar, 6 grapes.
He will have an Innocent smoothie made with 4ozs juice at 8am, 10.30am 4ozs cows milk diluted to 10oz with water, 12.30pm Innocent smoothie, 2pm water, 4.15pm diluted juice, 6pm water, 7.30pm 10ozs full fat organic milk, 10.30pm 2ozs organic milk diluted to 10ozs, 3am the same, 6am the same.
I would be grateful for any advice you may be able to offer with regard to increasing his solid food intake and improving his sleeping pattern. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that his lack of unbroken sleep during the night results from this.
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My son is 22 months old and has followed the CLB routine since he was 3 months old. He has been sleeping through the night since 4 months.
We have had the odd phase of early waking but he has always slept through the night, even when he has been ill. However, 4 weeks ago he started to wake in the night. It started when we were in our caravan on holiday, and I had to go to him immediately as I don’t think other campers would appreciate controlled crying! (We go away camping regularly so this was not a new environment for him) He went to sleep straight away after I said "shush" or "go to sleep".
This has now carried on for 4 weeks. He tends to wake between 12-1.30am and screams immediately. If I go straight in and say "shush" he will settle and that usually is the end of it. I never cuddle him etc, the most I will do is rearrange his sheet. We have also noticed that if I turn a light on he goes to sleep instantly and I don’t even go in his room. However if I leave a light on all night he might sleep through the night or he may not! We have tried controlled crying for 3 nights but he became uncontrollable and was sick once.
He settles well at 7.30pm and usually chatters for 30 minutes, the light is always off and the door closed. He is still in his cot bed and in a sleeping bag. Nothing has changed in his life. He sleeps usually from 1-2.30pm in the afternoon and I always have to wake him up.
Should I start with controlled crying again and see it through? I am also unsure about the night light because you mention in your book about leaving a light on for them to settle to sleep with, but you do not mention having one on all night.
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We are both doctors with regular night shifts and are just not getting any sleep at home either.
My daughter was a total contented baby right from day 1 - I followed all the routines and she learnt to go off to sleep by herself in her cot from the start. She's my 2nd baby and I know the routines very well. Until 9 months everything went well, but after 9 months she started waking at night despite feeding very well and not sleeping too much during the day. Unfortunately she wasn't very well - she's has numerous diarrhoea/vomiting infections, chest infections, coughs, colds etc, to the degree that we've seen various consultants - and I think she may have a mild immune deficiency - but she seems to be getting much better now ; she's 21 months and we've been discharged from clinic. She needs no treatment, and in fact I haven't taken her to the GP now for over 6 months.
However, I think maybe this is, at least in part, the cause of her sleeping problems, although these infections started when I stopped breastfeeding at 3 months and her sleep was great until 9 months. At the moment she wakes approx 50% of nights, usually at 1am, and is usually awake for 2 hours. I'm not sure why she wakes: she's still in a grobag which she's been in since the early days, we have a digital thermometer on our baby alarm so we can keep a close eye on the temperature in her room, she's eating and growing well so I'm sure that's not the problem, we have blackout lining and blinds in her room and her room is quiet. She has got teeth coming through, but this doesn't seem to bother her during the day and I don't think we can put her problems down to this. When she wakes she's often crying, sometimes screaming, sometimes just whimpering. We've never cuddled her to sleep and never given her milk at night since being a tiny baby - she slept through at 10 weeks I think, and goes to sleep each night at 7pm herself (she goes into her cot awake and settles herself off to sleep.) She hasn't had a lunchtime nap for 6 months, as it seemed to be the cause of her not going to sleep in the evenings, and she doesn't really struggle without a sleep in the day.
When she wakes, we've tried all approaches. We've been doing controlled crying for 3 months now - completely by the book - and it doesn't seem to be working. We go in at 5, 10, 15 minutes etc, don't get her out of bed, stroke her head, say: "night night", and leave. We never turn the light on. Despite this she still screams for 1-2 hours and sometimes makes herself sick. More recently my husband has tried the sitting in the room approach, which has worked on occasions but not last night. We've also tried just letting her cry which doesn't work either.
I kept a sleep diary for 2 weeks - the odd thing is that it's not every night, as I said about 50% of the time. It did seem to be that if my daughter had no daytime sleep at all (or max 5 minutes) and loads of daytime activity that she'd sleep, but it hasn't been the answer. For example, yesterday she had no daytime sleep at all, she ate well as always, we went to Tesco’s in the morning where she walked round most of the way, rather than going in the trolley and in the afternoon she ran round the garden as we had the paddling pool out. She went off to sleep at 7pm very tired, but woke at 1am crying - when my husband went in she started laughing and playing, he did controlled crying for 1 1/2 hours and eventually she went to sleep after another 30 minutes of whimpering on and off.
We're exhausted; she wakes our 3 yr old (who sleeps very well), so is making her tired too, and we don't know where to turn. I've asked our health visitors for advice on various occasions but they're stuck too.
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My daughter is now 20 months old. From around six months old, she slept from 7.30pm to 6.30-7am but for the last six months, more often than not she wakes during the night. It began during a period of illness but now she wakes up, sits herself up and cries out until someone comes to resettle her. She goes down beautifully at 7.30 but wakes once or twice after midnight. She usually settles quickly after a hug and a tucking in but it’s a real habit now. I’ve tried leaving her but no longer than thirty minutes.
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My 23mth old son had always slept from 7pm to 7.30/8.00am and enjoyed a good lunchtime nap but since the birth of his brother, eight weeks ago, he has begun to wake early.  He settles well at 7pm but he is now waking between 5.45am and 6.30am and is ready to get up.   When he wakes he calls out and wakes the baby too.

My son eats three good meals a day at the times recommended by The Contented Baby.   His lunchtime nap is from 12.30-2.30pm.   Before the arrival of the baby he would sometimes sleep from 12.30-2.30/3pm.
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I had a lot of great help from Gina in the early days and got my son sleeping through the night at 9 weeks.
My son is 18 mths and since 9 weeks was sleeping through the night and then later on from 7pm until 8am up until bad teething started last September. At first I couldn't understand why he was waking in the night and early morning until a tooth appeared. But the tooth would take ages to come through and the sleep disturbance 2-3 weeks. We then had 2 weeks of good sleep followed by another tooth and so on. We are going through another spell which has now been going on for 3 weeks and he is still waking between 6-6.30 am and won't go back to sleep. He has 3 very, very good meals a day. He drinks lots of water. He eats porridge at breakfast, meat/fish and vegetables with potatoes or rice at lunch and supper is pasta or sandwiches. He drinks a full beaker of milk at bedtime. I always have to wake him up after 1.5 hours sleep at 2.30pm. Sometimes he chats for a while before going to sleep at lunchtime and at 7pm. He sleeps in sleeping bag and room is 18 degrees. He gets lots of fresh air and activity. I really can't believe that I need to cut his lunchtime nap shorter. Can teething really affect them for this long?

My son dropped his morning nap at 9 months and will go happily to 1pm for his nap. His fourth molar is still coming through after 3 weeks of it first appearing. When he wakes early he just chats and can still get through to 1pm for his nap having eaten a good lunch at 12.30pm.
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9.

I am very confused as to what to do about the 6/6.30am early morning waking that I am now experiencing. My daughter of 23mths goes down at 7pm settling to sleep straight away and always used to be woken at 7am. Since the clocks went back a month ago she has woken early. I have tried giving her 2 1/4 hours sleep at lunchtime, 1 1/2 hours at lunchtime any times between 12.30pm and 3.15pm. She always has to be woken from this nap. Nothing seems to work to get her to sleep back through to 7am. I have not gone into her room before 7am and just left her there whinging and calling out for us - which we hate, but want her to realize that its still sleep time. This has not worked either. She is in a sleeping bag, in nappies, eats well, and is active and quite normal. It is just difficult to know what to do. Do we cut right back on her lunchtime sleep, or settle her later than 1pm? Do we let her sleep as long as she likes at lunchtime? Should we go into her room when she wakes up in the morning and explain its still sleep time, put a book in her cot - although she wouldn't be able to read it as its too dark. I just really need help on this part of the routine as it doesn't explain what to do anywhere.

All the other problems I have come across with my daughter I have been able to rectify with the help of your website and books. I would really also like to know when you should be cutting down the lunchtime naps, at what age, stage, signs, and the times they should be sleeping from and to as they grow up. I have a 9 mth old and another on the way so I really do need my sleep until 7am!
At present my daughters lunchtime nap can be from 12.30-2.30pm, 1-2.30pm and 1-3pm.
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My son will be two next month and I am having problems with him not sleeping enough at night. He will only sleep for about 9.5 hours and then wakes up still very tired but we just can't get him to return to bed. Even as a young baby he never slept for the full 12 hours but would do about 11; he was fine on this though. He is a very good eater and has milk first thing, then a big breakfast, snack, protein lunch, snack and carbs for dinner then milk before bed. He also has a nap after his lunch during which time he would happily go for 2-3 hours although I do wake him up after 1-1.5 hours. He is also getting quite hard to put down for his nap and some days will miss it completely. This happens on average once or twice a week. He goes to bed around half seven and is not a problem to put down. He will either pass out straight away or chat to himself for 20 minutes or so depending upon how tired he is. However he always wakes about 9.5 hours after he is put down. We have tried altering his bedtime but it doesn't seem to matter how early or late it is; he still only sleeps for the same amount of time. For example yesterday, when he had no nap, he woke after the same amount of time and was so tired this morning but I spent an hour trying to get him back to sleep and he just wanted to get up. He is obviously quite whiney and whingy when he doesn't get enough sleep but I just can't seem to help him go for longer. 6am is now feeling like a lie in which is pretty horrific for us!
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My daughter always slept well from 7pm to 6-7am since she was 10 weeks old. We moved house 6 weeks ago and it was all right still. My children now have a room each; since birth my daughter had shared with her brother who is 2 years older. In the beginning there were no problems with separating them. In the past 2 weeks after a teething bout she is now waking at 5-5.30am. On some mornings my daughter will respond to controlled crying after a few minutes. But she doesn’t go back to sleep. She only chatters or is quiet until 6am. On a few mornings I have had to do controlled crying for 45 minutes by which time her 3.5 yr brother is awake and it is then time to get up anyway. This early waking affects her daytime sleep and she needs 30 minutes at 9-9.30am. She then sleeps 1-2 hrs after lunch at 12.30/1pm.
We are at a loss to know how to get her to sleep longer as I feel I can’t drop her morning nap while she wakes so early and her brother (who still naps most afternoons) is very tired if he is woken early by her. She rarely wakes in the night. Both children are so good in most things although have always been early risers (7am is a luxury), but before 6am is too early. She settles at night by 6.30pm.
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Since my 17-month-old daughter has dropped her morning nap, which she was having at 9.30 am for 15 minutes, she has started waking earlier and earlier in the morning despite a good 2 hour sleep at lunch. Everything remains the same as before - I have tried earlier and later and shorter and longer naps at lunch but there is no difference to waking in the morning having moved from 7am to 6am. I have scoured the web site and know the CLB books back to front. I have found a few useful things but in general I have checked and been through nearly all the suggestions: she is not going down overtired as she is talking in her cot for 10 minutes before falling asleep. Possibly she is getting over tired in the morning but I have brought forward her lunchtime nap to nearer 12-12.15 for 2 hours and I have also tried moving this to nearer 1 and cutting back the time to 1 half hours : she is having lunch at 11.30; she is in her room by 12 and she is down by 12.15. Life has been very disrupted recently with a move to Mozambique but I have kept things pretty calm and on schedule and she seems very happy. I am desperate for advice as there is little support for me here in Africa and I am getting exhausted with lack of sleep and trying to cope with setting ourselves up here!
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My 19-month-old son has always been a great sleeper, but recently he has been waking up between 5:30 and 6:00 am: this is too early for me! He goes to sleep between 7:30 and 8:00pm. I have tried putting him down closer to 8, but it does not seem to make any difference. When he was younger, Sam would wake up and play in his cot, but he now wakes up crying for 'mama' or 'dada'. I have been going in and telling him its still sleep time and lying him back down. He will stay there for about 15 minutes when he begins whining again. After several times of the same I bring him into my bed (I know: “shame on me!”) just so I can get a few more minutes of rest; this is not even helpful because he doesn’t really like to sleep in my bed anyway. Besides the fact that I would like him to sleep later, I am concerned that his sleep between 5:00 and 6:30 is fragmented and not as optimal as it could be for him.
Sam takes one nap during the day between 12-12:30pm for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to battle the early morning waking and perhaps how to teach him to play in his crib by himself until I come in to get him at 7am?
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Isla has been a great contented baby, but we are having troubles with early waking. She is waking at 5.30-6am. I have checked all the usual reasons; she sleeps in a bag, and has done since a baby, she is definitely not cold, her room is completely blacked out. In the space of several weeks she went from having a 2hr lunchtime nap (1-3pm) to refusing a nap altogether. We tried that but then started to have night time waking. So after a few noisy days we got back to having a lunchtime nap which I reduced to 1hr. I keep her up to 7.30pm yet she still wakes early. She gets outside as much as the weather allows, and is never still. She eats well and is otherwise a healthy child. She has a 9mth brother who is also a contented baby.
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My 19-month-old son has always been a great sleeper, but recently he has been waking up between 5:30 and 6:00 am: this is too early for me! He goes to sleep between 7:30 and 8:00pm. I have tried putting him down closer to 8, but it does not seem to make any difference. When he was younger, Sam would wake up and play in his cot, but he now wakes up crying for 'mama' or 'dada'. I have been going in and telling him its still sleep time and lying him back down. He will stay there for about 15 minutes when he begins whining again. After several times of the same I bring him into my bed (I know: “shame on me!”) just so I can get a few more minutes of rest; this is not even helpful because he doesn’t really like to sleep in my bed anyway. Besides the fact that I would like him to sleep later, I am concerned that his sleep between 5:00 and 6:30 is fragmented and not as optimal as it could be for him.
Sam takes one nap during the day between 12-12:30pm for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to battle the early morning waking and perhaps how to teach him to play in his crib by himself until I come in to get him at 7am?
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My daughter is 18 months old, and an only child, at birth she weighed 9lb 9ozs and now weighs 26.4lbs. She eats 3 good meals a day:
Breakfast - Rice Krispies (4 tablespoons) and milk, 3-4 pieces of dried fruit and 1 slice of toast
Morning snack - toast or biscuit and fruit
Lunch - 5-6 tablespoons of homemade food, any meat fish and vegetables, plus a pudding of yoghurt/fruit
Snack - biscuit
Tea - as for lunch

Mary still has 3 x 6oz milk feeds every day, and is allergic to dairy, wheat, gluten, eggs and nuts. I work full-time, she goes to a childminder, the same one since she was 12 weeks old. Mary has 1-2 hours of sleep at 12.30pm; she goes to bed at 7pm following a milk feed and a bath by myself or my partner; she settles herself without any difficulty, wherever we are.
My problem is that for the last 2-3 weeks Mary has been waking up to 3 times a night and always waking at 5-5.30 am, whereas she would sleep all night until approximately 7am. Occasionally she wants a drink, sometimes just a cuddle, in fact I'm not sure what she wants at times.
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My 21-month-girl is starting to wake at 6-6.30am. She has always slept until 7-7.30am. She is also becoming difficult to settle at 7pm. She lies in her cot and chatters/plays until 8pm.
She is currently having two hours' sleep at lunchtime from 1pm to 3pm. Some days she doesn't seem very tired when I put her down. Is this a sign that I should cut down her lunchtime nap?
I also have a newborn and I would be grateful for any help.
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My 21 month old son has always been happy to go to bed in cot and left to go to sleep on own. He will resettle himself if he wakes in the night and sleeps until 6.30 - 7.30 every day. We have just moved him in to the big bed and new room as I also have a 3 month old still in her swing crib and would her to go in the cot. Relations between children are good. My son loves his new room. If we settle him as normal and just sit in the room with him in a chair he will go to sleep as usual in 30-60 minutes. If we try to leave the room he is back out of bed and will howl the place down at the stair gate in his room. I know it is recommended in the books to keep him in a cot longer. Should we back track or persevere? He has never been clingy and genuinely seems to like his bed as long as we are there. Please help as we don't want to do lasting damage to his routine as he has always been so good at sleeping.
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My 21 month old son has been taking a long time to settle at night. I put him in bed at around 7:45pm, but he doesn't fall asleep till around 8:30pm. He used to take about 15-20mins to fall asleep now it is taking much longer than that. I have to sit in the room and wait for him to fall asleep before I can leave.
During the day he is sleeping for an hour, sometimes a little longer.
Should I decrease his daytime nap to 30mins or cut it out all together? Would this make his settling at night shorter?

My son naps at 1-2pm.
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I really hope you can offer some advice to assist with our daughters getting to sleep at night - whilst she is not crying or distressed I think it is starting to impact her during the day - she is always grizzling and seems tired
My daughter is taking up to 2 1/2 hours to go to sleep at night, and this is making her tired during the day. I suspect she is now using her day sleeps to make up for the lost sleep at night because she goes down so late. She is not crying while she is trying to go to sleep, she may occasionally grizzle or give a little cry but generally she is moving around, talking to herself, playing and has a lovely time! During the day she can be very grizzly and annoying to be honest! I think it is often because of being tired as all the other "triggers" like hunger, boredom etc have normally been dealt with. I really think that is because her night time sleep is quite short (between 9 and 10 hours and she always been a child who needs her sleep so has been on the "higher" side of the recommended sleep for her age).

My daughter wakes round 7am, and has a bottle followed by breakfast at 8am. No morning sleep, snack at abut 10am. Lunch at 12:00, and sleep at 12:30. We have few problems with her going down for the daytime sleep - takes about 15 minutes for her to go down. She will generally sleep until between 2:30 and 3:30 - we have a rule that we don't let her sleep past 3pm though, so we wake her if needed then. We are only doing this as we thought it better that we didn't let her sleep too late in the day. Snack at 3pm. Dinner at 5:20pm, bath at 6pm. Night bottle at 6:40 pm and then into bed at 7pm. Once she is asleep she rarely ever wakes up.
Things we have tried - we dropped her morning sleep and moved her afternoon sleep forward from 1:30 to 12:30 instead. Tried putting her down earlier (say 6:40pm - no difference - could take up to 3 hours to go to sleep) and later in the evening - 7:30 - sometimes seemed to make a small difference as she sometimes fell asleep after only 30 - 40 minutes but was not consistent and to be honest this isn't my preference as I find it exhausting keeping her up till 7:30).
Other information, she does have a dummy but she has it in and rarely ever cries for it. She has a muslin wrap that she loves and she cuddles this when she goes to sleep but that is always with her. She is a good eater - she likes her food and I don't think she is hungry. Her bedroom is a very warm room due to the hot Australian sun hitting her bedroom each afternoon - we have bought a cooler for the room and it keeps her a bit cooler but it is still very warm. She sleeps in very light pajamas and a light cotton sleeping bag. We have tried not putting her in the sleeping bag but then she treats her cot like a race track and walks around and around it so we try to always use it.

My daughter has always settled herself to sleep - in fact she has always been remarkably good at just going to sleep - I have never patted or soothed her - we put her into her cot, say goodnight, close the curtains and walk out.

Her night time routine consists of the dinner, play, bath, bottle and bed. We don't read her books as she will not still for more than about 20 seconds so we gave up on that. We tend to not do anything special although we do have a verse we say each night as we put her to bed. She tends to watch the TV and play with us just as I have the TV on for the news (or Neighbours! how embarrassing to admit that!) just before the time she goes to bed so maybe that is too stimulating?
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My 23 month old son has been a CLB since he was 6 weeks old, and would settle himself to sleep at 7 pm from the time he was 12 weeks old. When he was 14mths old we went away for a holiday and he would not settle himself as it was a strange room. To get him to sleep I would lie down quietly on the bed with him until he fell asleep (in about 10 mins). Somehow after the holiday he never went back to settling down by himself and for the last 9 months this is how he goes to sleep every night. I transfer him to the cot and then he sleeps right through till 8.30 am. Now however we have a 3 month old baby who I am trying to get into the CLB routine and I can't manage to put my elder son to sleep as well. Hence I have started on sleep training. For the first day he cried for 45 minutes, vomited and then fell asleep. For the next 4 nights he cried for 30 minutes. He now starts getting anxious and begging me to stay with him every evening. This normally starts after his bath when he knows that the next thing is bed. I stay with him for about 10 mins, (saying prayers, cuddling etc) then transfer him to the cot and leave. I don't go into the room again till I know that he is really asleep to check on him and make sure that he has not made himself sick. How long is this going to take? His begging for me to come back and crying on the monitor makes me feel so guilt. He settles at 7.30pm.
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We have had the most terrible week - we have moved house which is stressful enough but my daughter of 20mths has become very unsettled. She has coped extremely well over the past few months with moving country to Africa (we live in Mozambique) and then temporary accommodation. We have made various trips in this time and stayed in other places and she has been fine with her same routine every night always settling well in a new place, crying for up to 10 minutes on the first night but settling down. All has changed this week - we have unpacked all her room and her toys and she is in a lovely room and back in her cot rather than her travel cot. We have had absolute hysterics both when I have put her down for her lunch time nap and to bed. The moment she wakes she is waking screaming and last night it took me 3 hours from 1 am to 4 am to get her back to sleep even staying in the same room as her. I have done sleep training in the past and I have tried this for the past 3 nights but she seems so traumatized that I don?ft know what to do. This is a baby who always goes into the cot happy and will spend up to an hour talking and playing both at night and in the morning - HELP! This evening I have sat with her to get her to sleep however every time she stirs now she is waking again and screaming for me. When she wakes she is insisting that she wants to get out of the room and pointing to the door. I am at a bit of a loss what to do as she is such a good girl and obviously this move has been the last straw for her. Any advice would be gratefully received as I am exhausted and pregnant!

My daughter eats a varied and healthy diet with three good meals and two snacks a day. She drinks 8ozs of formula before going to bed.

She naps from 1-3pm.
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My 19-month-old daughter is getting difficult to settle in the evenings. I mistakenly used to hold her until she was asleep. However, for the last 4 months I have been putting her in her cot, after a few minutes of sitting with her in the dark. I used to be able to leave the room fairly shortly after this. Now as soon as I turn out the light she will insist on being put in her cot, however as soon as I take my hand away from her she becomes distressed. This can carry on for 30-45 minutes, by the end of which she is usually crying. I am concerned that she is not seeing enough of me during the day and trying to make up for it by prolonging the bed time routine. I work full time and she is cared for by a nanny. However as I am 7 months pregnant with twins, I really can't stand for long over her cot at night, holding her hand to comfort her. Once asleep she is generally very good and doesn't wake up.
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My 18mth son still has a morning nap of 20-30 minutes on the days he is not at nursery. He usually starts his day between 6-6.30am, never having slept until 7am. He does not seem tired at home but settles to his nap in 5-10minutes. When at nursery he has a much earlier lunchtime nap so manages to stay up all morning. We are going abroad in 6 weeks and I don’t really want to have to return to our room just for this quick nap.

My son naps at 9.30-9.50am and 1-2.15pm when at home. At nursery he goes down between 11.30and 12 midday and naps for 2-2.5hrs.
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My daughter is 19 months old on 4th February and still has a morning nap when at home. She goes to nursery three days a week and sleeps for 2 hours at lunchtime. She is always in bed for 7pm and sleeps through till 7am. On the days I do not work and I usually wake Grace at 7 -7.15am. She always shows signs of being tired at around 9.15 -.9.30am. She will even start climbing the stairs so rather than keep her up as I have in the past to attempt to cut out the morning sleep, I let her have a nap for 45 minutes. She always falls asleep immediately so is obviously tired. At the weekend we usually leave Grace to wake herself. Even if she wakes later such as 8am - 8.30 she still is ready for bed again a couple of hours later, so I put her to bed and we alter the routine from there.
I truly believe she is not ready to drop her morning nap, but I’m concerned that she should have by this age. I will look out for signs though such as early waking or being hard to settle at lunchtime nap so I will reduce and gradually cut out morning nap. Is there anything else I should look out for ?
On the days I have tried to keep her up she is too tired to eat her lunch and will end up screaming when she is put to bed for a sleep as she is obviously overtired.
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I have a problem with my 20 month old daughter's midday nap at the moment.
Up until now, she has been a perfect Gina Ford baby: happy and lively, except when tired. She sleeps and settles well by herself for her daytime naps (12:30 - 14:30) and night-time sleep. She sleeps well from 7pm-7am (and will even sleep till 8am if I leave her). She has only dropped her morning nap a month and a half ago (which was challenging enough as she was barely making it to 12:15/12:30pm). But it took a couple of weeks and she was fine.
Two weeks ago she started going to nursery school (I think she's ready because she is constantly asking for friends and I can see that she is bored). The plan was that I was going to pick her up at 12pm and take her home for her 2 hour nap. But the teacher says she is so tired at school, she goes down at 11:00 and then only sleeps for an hour, sometimes now for an hour and a half. So with her having last slept at 12:30 she is VERY CRABBY and tired for pretty much the rest of the day. She does make it to 6:45-7pm and will settle OK. But the afternoon is VERY long with such a unhappy baby.
I tried twice in the afternoons to make her sleep at about 2:30pm to 3:30pm, but she screamed/cried for about 10 minutes before falling asleep eventually (my nerves!). Her mood was much better for the rest of the day though. I recall that Gina mentioned that is was better to have 1 long sleep, rather than 2 shorter ones.
I really don't know what to do - I spoke to the teacher and asked her to see if she can keep her awake longer, but the teacher said that she gets so tired she goes and lies on the carpet in an attempt to sleep. The teacher says it is difficult for her keep her awake.
Do you think she will get used to all the extra stimulation and will stretch longer herself eventually?
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