Oh noes! Nap Striking!!!

Alex is into his fifth month of nap striking behavior and I'm at the end of my rope. Changing the time he naps only results in a night like this one in which it's 9:30 PM and he's showing no signs of going to sleep. Assigning "quiet time" in place of a nap has not worked. The only thing that seems to work is taking him out in the mornings, but in the dead of winter, it's just not practical for every day survival.

I know he needs the naps. On days he does not nap - which are about 5 days a week - he becomes completely irrational and the tantrums grow worse with each successive day of no nap. Today was the fourth consecutive day of no nap and he was just not himself at all this morning. We're talking screaming, kicking hysterical tantrum all because he wanted to play with the light switch in his nursery and I didn't understand him. That's NOT Alex - normally. But it's sure becoming Alex.

Have you ever cured this behavior? If so, how?

Thanks,
Lynne


I haven't been. I wasn't sure whether or not I was supposed to be because it's sleep. It's not like I can force him to do it. I used to spend 3 hours a nap strike day trying to get him to sleep. At around 2:30 I'd give up and just take him out, keeping him up until his normal bedtime. But those days are sheer hell. The 3 hours of trying exhausts me emotionally and then his mood goes downhill from about 4 PM on. By the time we get to bathtime at 8, he's usually shrieking and throwing things.

Then I just stopped exhausting myself for those three hours. If he didn't nap in the first 30-45 minutes of my trying, I didn't try again and whenever he threw a tantrum due to being tired, I'd just remind him of why he was tired and walk away. That wound up reinforcing the nap strike reward and it turned 2 days a week into 5.

Today, I figured I'd try moving the nap again, but keeping it to an hour and a half, which ended at 5 PM. It's now 10 PM and he's still up - just like it would be months ago when I first tried it.

Dan is with him, so I'm not ready to jump in front of a train yet, but I still can't relax when he's up.

Normally Alex is an excellent night sleeper. He started STTN at around 3.5 months and just stayed with it. He wakes up in the middle of the night on occasion, but it's rare.

It's just the days that he nap strikes that sometimes wind up being really late bedtimes. Usually it's when the cumulative sleep deprivation hits him after days of nap striking, like today. Then his mood is horrific. The tantrums are constant. There have been times I actually thought he was injured or ill because of how irrational he would get. I finally pieced it together when I started to keep track of his nap strikes. They were happening 4-5 times a week, like I suspected. It's when they last four days in a row, like today, that it just gets baaaaaad. Obviously, he can't get through without a nap.

Once he gets to sleep on a bad day like today, he'll stay asleep for 11 hours. Sucks for him and me that I've about had it with the nap strikes and he'll be getting 8.5 hours tonight.
Thanks all for your suggestions. Waking him up at 7:30 AM (an hour early) seemed to do the trick yesterday. But today, my husband didn't know that I wanted to get up at 7, so he changed the alarm. I woke at 8:19 when Alex woke me and he refused a nap again. My day has been utter misery since 12:30 PM - an hour past the time I put him down. I left him in his crib for two hours, like I often do - but he's not crying when I do. I really don't think I could do CIO just yet, because his five months of nap striking has me totally enraged at this point. (Today, I was actually yelling at him. ) I would grow past "totally enraged" in about 10 minutes of his crying and screaming to get let out of the crib. I know I would wind up screaming at him over it.

I think I'm going to try a multi-pronged approach combining a lot of your suggestions. I made it crystal clear to my husband that re-setting the alarm off from 7 AM means that my day will be sheer hell from 11:30 onwards. So, don't do it. I will be trying to establish a nap time routine just like I did for bedtime. The taking him outside in the mornings has worked in the past, but I can't risk his expecting it everyday when it's still February. I'm undecided on when I'll bring that in.

I can't believe I screamed at him today. I hate that the nap strikes have driven me so off the edge like that. He was throwing a screaming, crying tantrum (over what, I don't know) and I just went off on him. Within a minute of my screaming, his face twisted in a look of betrayal (I never yell at him) and he started blubbering "I sorry! I sorry!". So, yeah, all my screaming did was make him cry more which rode my nerves even more. I just stayed in the kitchen while he continued to cry and just continued with dinner prep.

I have to do something.

Thanks Sharon. Unfortunately that doesn't work for me. I hear it no matter what. Right now it's 10:23 PM on the US east coast and he's still not $#@!$@#%$ ing asleep because he didn't $#@~!$#ing nap today. He's not screaming right now, but if Dan tries to leave the nursery, I'm sure he will.

It's an unusually warm day in the NY area. I have my front door open for fresh air and I keep staring out wanting to pack a bag and find a hotel room for the night. That would cost Dan a sick day at work, but it beats the cost of repairing a wall after I put a chair through one.

Lynne
Thank you all. Last night (Weds) continued to be hell until about 11 PM. Alex is accustomed to sleeping 11 hours at night. If he goes to bed that late, he'll usually sleep at least 10 hours, but the sun eventually wakes him.

I tried a multi-blast approach today. I woke him up earlier than 10 hours after he went to sleep. Then I had him do an excercise video with me. (Baby Einstein). Then I took him outside to the store before his nap. Then we did a "wind down" involving soft music and a not-so-engaging book. He went down for his nap at 1 and I let him nap for only two hours.

There was some bitching at night bedtime, but not much.

Hopefully tomorrow, I can repeat this naptime routine - provided my husband understands that 8 AM is not 7 AM. (That's what he set the alarm for...sigh).

Alex was himself today. Agreeable. A decent eater. Patient with his toys. Independent. Obedient with "don't touch" areas. Thank you all so much for your support and ideas!

Oh, please, oh, please, oh please let this work!
Lynne

Philicia, no, not rambling at all. They're all very good suggestions. Since I know my temper cannot handle CIO right now, I have to try different approaches.

To answer your questions about his sleep habits before the nap striking started: He typically woke at 7:30, napped as early as 10:30 by the end of the summer, but it sometimes clung onto 11:30 like it was for so long. I think some of the reasons the nap moved up in July and August were the longer daylight hours and because we were spending such long days outside in the summer. When the days started growing shorter and the sun was rising later, his nap started going back to 11:30 which, incidentally has been a naptime since he was a newborn.

Alex typically sleeps 11 hours a night, going to sleep at 8:30 if waking at 7:30. He'll usually sleep 11 hours straight no matter what time he goes to bed. It was the single nap that wound up staying at 3 hours a day. When he consolidated down to one nap a day, when he was about 11 months old, he never shortened the period of time. I didn't interrupt it because I figured that if I wasn't having night bedtime issues, then he must need that amount of sleep.

After the nap striking behavior kicked in, his bedtime went "back" to 9:30 - like it had become last winter. I tried playing with the time for naps. I tried getting him to bed earlier at night. The nap strikes just continued and bedtime became a REAL nightmare when it had never been before. It seemed that the earlier I tried to get him to bed at night, the longer he would be up. If I aimed for his old 8:30, however, I could wind up with his sleeping by 9.

There have been several changes around here that have happened since September that I can think of. The first is the shorter daylight hours and the later sunrise. The second is that my husband started taking two classes a semester which resulted in his getting home really late two nights a week and having a ton of homework to do on weekends. It made Dan less available to Alex just at a time when the quality of his time with him had begun to improve. Alex started to experience going to bed at night without seeing Dan at all on those two days.

Now that Dan's class schedule has become two days a week in the middle of the day, he is only one hour later on each of those days. He's also been better about organizing his homework and study so that it doesn't take up all day on both weekend days. So, now, I think Alex doesn't want to miss Daddy.

I'm going to be working towards a more solid schedule for me and Alex, but I can't bet that my husband will be able to follow it. There are gains to be made if my husband would wake up earlier on weekdays, because those often correllate with nap days. For now, though, I've gone back to waking earlier than Alex to get my head at peace so I can handle the nap strikes better if they happen and then waking Alex earlier than he would normally get up since the Fall/Winter started.

Lynne

Philicia, it wasn't a matter of Dan getting upset about not seeing Alex (though he was disappointed). It was a matter of Alex getting upset that Dan wasn't home. I only just now got Alex used to eating dinner without Dan. When I started months ago, Alex would refuse to eat and just call for Dan all the time. As for my explaining the importance of a schedule to Dan, been there, done that and considering buying a time share in that far off land by now. He doesn't do it. I have tried a week or more at a time of putting Alex down at 7:30. It leads only to Alex then refusing to sleep until after 10, unfortunately. I don't have bedtime trouble if he does nap for three hours (or at least 2). I have bedtime trouble on the days he won't nap. It pretty much goes like this - IF the nap happens for at least 2 hours, I have a good chance of his falling asleep even as early as 8:30 PM. If the nap does not happen at all, that's when he'll be up as late as 11PM. Alex falls asleep on his own. He surprised us as a newborn having absolutely no problem transitioning to his own crib from the Pack N' Play in our bedroom. He only has a sippy of water, a blanket and some favored stuffed animals in his crib. He took better to bedtime once I put in a nightlight with a flicker effect. But, he actually doesn't mind the dark. He doesn't wake up in the middle of the night often. It would probably be optimal if I could bring his music back in there, but my old iPod has been out of commission for a while.