I write this post on what is a rare occasion in at the Carrot Patch. It’s 9 PM and Baby C, currently a month shy of 3 and a half years old, is asleep. For most people reading this post (probably all people, actually), a 3.5 year old asleep at 9 PM is an every day occurrence. At the Carrot Patch, it’s reserved to Saturday and Sunday nights, when Baby C doesn’t nap.
Ever since Baby C was born, she was extremely alert. Even as a tiny 4 and a half pound premie in the NICU, she was constantly observing, and though I didn’t start paying real attention to her sleep until she was a few months old, it always felt like she just didn’t sleep much (though I’m guessing most new parents feel that way).
After Baby C turned one, her bedtime shifted noticeably. Where she was previously falling asleep around 6:30, after having a bottle, she was suddenly staying awake longer. And then longer and longer, until her bedtime (aka, the time she actually fell sleep) settled somewhere around 8:45 when she was 18 months old. And frankly, we were beside ourselves, trying to figure out what to do, to the point of even consulting with a sleep expert.
The biggest “problem” we were encountering is that Baby C was simply going to bed way later than everyone said she should be, and taking a long time to get to sleep. And we were doing everything right (and continue to do to this day). Electronics are off in our house after dinner time. We keep lights low and try to minimize too much activity. We have a bedtime routine that’s been consistent since Baby C was an infant (with adjustments for time over the years) – bath, books, bed. No matter how relaxed we kept everything around her, she would take at least a half hour, and often well past an hour, to actually fall asleep, and it usually wouldn’t happen until at least 8:45, when everyone around us was saying 7-8 is what we should be aiming for. When we spoke with a sleep expert, she couldn’t figure out what we could try either because we were hitting all the right points. We tried an earlier bedtime for a few weeks, thinking maybe we had an overly tired kid, and all that resulted into was a much grumpier toddler who had to hang out in the crib for much longer than usual. We tried putting her to bed right at her “fall asleep” time and then shifting backward by 15 minutes every day – nothing changed. We tried massage, lavender, warm milk, standing on one foot during a full moon – she kept on falling asleep at exactly the same time.
A few months after the new 8:45 PM normal settled in, we calmed down and decided that this is just our kid. She was at the low end of average sleep for her age but not far off. She was napping well, and we were limiting her nap to match what her daycare was doing and to keep bedtime at a decent time. Without fail, if she napped any longer than 2 hours, her bedtime would adjust by however much longer she napped, and what emerged in that time is that my kid is very consistent in how much time she needed awake and how much time she needed asleep. Any deviation from one effectively changed the other.
Of course, 8:45 PM lasted about 6 months, and shortly after turning 2 (this kid is nothing if not consistent), “fall asleep” time began shifting again, settling somewhere around 9:15-9:45 by the time she was 2.5. As in the previous year’s shift, I was losing my mind. As a morning person, and thus someone who goes to bed early myself, these shifts were cutting away more and more of what little free time I had at the end of the day. A 2-year-old going to bed after 9 PM was unthinkable. I was posting to mommy boards, deploying every “calm bedtime” tool possible. Nothing worked. By 3 years old, we were averaging 9:30-10 for bedtime, and these days, at almost 3.5, when she naps (which her daycare makes mandatory, much to my dismay), it’s between 10:15-11 PM.
At a certain point, I began to calm down (and I’m a work in progress, especially on those 11 PM bedtime days). According to most “average sleep by age” charts, including the one I linked above, the normal amount of sleep a kid Baby C’s age needs is 10 hours on the low end. When I look at her average day, she gets somewhere between 10-11 hours of sleep (including naps if she naps at daycare). When I read about the importance of early bedtimes, I start to do math and wonder how kids manage to go to bed at 8 PM, wake up at 6-7 AM, and nap unless they’re on the higher end of that average. And as our pediatrician has told us at every well visit for the past 3 years, where Baby C continued to stay a little kid after being born a little kid and never cracking the growth chart percentiles, “someone has to be on the low end of the average.”
If you Google search for a definition of a low sleep needs kid, there really isn’t one, but the term gets tossed around a lot. I’ve been calling Baby C a low needs sleeper ever since our first bedtime shift 2 years ago, because she always just hung out on the low end of that “average” need. For all our late bedtime frustrations, Baby C is overall a good sleeper. She’s slept through the night since fairly early on, she’s been a pretty independent sleeper for most of the past 3 years (until a recent separation anxiety phase hit and she required one of us to hang with her until she’s asleep), and she handled nearly every major sleep transition, including nap drops, developmental shifts, and the big girl bed transition, without much fluster.
Now that she’s old enough to get through the weekends without naps, there are more nights that she’s in bed by 8-9 PM. I will eventually watch all the TV I’ve missed in the past 2 years for lack of time and energy. Mr. Carrot and I will eventually manage a conversation in the evening rather than just dropping dead asleep after wrestling a 27 lb child into sleep for 2 hours. And rumor has it that hyperactivity and less sleep than average can be a sign of genius, so we’ll just tell all those friends whose eyes get like saucers when we tell them Baby C’s bedtime that we’re testing the genius theory out. 
guest
Sounds like you need to have a heart to heart with your daycare provider about shortening or dropping her naps. They won’t want to do it, but you can push them. Give them suggestions of other quiet activities she can do during naptime that won’t be disruptive – looking at books, coloring, helping a teacher clean up in the kitchen, etc. We did this when my daughter was around 3.5 and she went from falling asleep around 9:30-10:00 (sometimes even later) to 8:30. Now that she is 5 and in kindergarten, she falls asleep easily at 8-8:30.
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
@AVG, they won’t do it. It’s a policy for all the groups (it goes up through pre-K) that they have quiet or nap time 1-3 PM and they are fine lettings kids not sleep, but they won’t keep them awake on purpose either. And she’ll fall asleep a good chunk of the time because everyone else is.
apricot / 370 posts
This is us too. Same policy at daycare – the cot is out, the child can choose to sleep or not. Even as an infant, it was 8pm before she’d fall asleep no matter what we did.
Our second child is completely different, of course.
guest
I have a ‘low sleep needs’ kid also. Always has been. I recently posted about how she is 4 and just started to sleep through more consistently, partly because of dropping weekend naps and pushing back bedtime. Left to her own devices, she sleeps from about 10-7, with no nap. On school/work nights we enforce a 9:00 bedtime, but she usually stays awake in her room.
On weekends, with no nap, she usually sleeps through, but we have the daycare conundrum, too: they nap 2 hours a day and it is non-negotiable. She falls asleep there, but that pushes bedtime back and usually still involves me waking up at 2 a.m. to hear her singing and chatting to herself in one of her middle of the night wakings.
I still stress about her not getting enough sleep, but I don’t think there’s anything we haven’t tried (outside of drugging her).
blogger / apricot / 482 posts
This is totally us, but instead of falling asleep late, our oldest wakes up ridiculously early. He has always been this way and at around 9 months, dropped down to one nap, would fall asleep around 7:30 but then be up for the day by 4am. We talked to his pediatrician, but all she could say was, “Well, you can’t force him to sleep. Maybe he just doesn’t need as much sleep.”
guest
FWIW…daycares/preschools have this policy in part because teachers can legally monitor twice the number of students during nap, which also allows them to more easily break their workers without needing a ton of subs. Is there an older room that doesn’t nap? I know my former center would sometimes send kids into the Kindergarten room or into the office to read if the parents made a big enough fuss.
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
@Robin, I totally understand why the have the requirement (though I didn’t know the legal standard, but I get them needing the time to take their own breaks, eat lunch, etc.). It’s a policy across the whole daycare (which goes up through pre-K; she’s in the 3s now). We just had an open house with her classroom last week and asked about this and they don’t force the kids to sleep, but cots are out regardless and they follow what the kid wants to do.
pomelo / 5084 posts
@Mrs. Carrot: Same boat! Our almost one year old sleeps 9-10 hours a day which is WAY low for that age. But he’s happy and healthy so we are ok with it I guess! One difference – he is a BIG baby and will be 27 pounds in a hot minute – are you saying your 3 year old is 27 pounds????
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
@wrkbrk: Haha, yup, she’s a tiny little thing. She was born little (4.5 lbs) and has stayed little, though she fits into 3T clothing without a problem and even inching into 4T.
olive / 52 posts
This is my son to a T! If he naps, it’s impossible to get him down at any kind of decent hour — he is usually up until 9:30 or 10! On days he doesn’t nap, we can get him down between 8-9. He sleeps until around 7 or 7:30 usually (though right now with the time change he’s been waking up between 6 and 6:30. I’m dying.)
kiwi / 595 posts
Us too! My 4yo hasn’t napped in over a year and her bed time is still 9. We’ll do a few weeks later f 8:30, then she’ll shift it back to 9, 9:30.
pomelo / 5621 posts
DS is 3.5 and is an early bird, always has been. 6am is like sleeping in here. Bedtime is 8pm and he is usually asleep by 9. He naps about 2 hours a day.
I’m a night owl but he has turned me into an early bird.
coffee bean / 29 posts
My 2 year old has always been a horrible sleeper. She does not nap on most days now. I always worry about it but she seems to be happy and healthy. There are bigger battles in life
coconut / 8472 posts
My son always takes a while to fall asleep too. But we do his bedtime routine and leave him. Maybe instead of worrying about how late she gets to sleep, you focus on getting out of her room so you can have quiet/alone time.
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
@ShootingStar: She was doing that without a problem until June, when I ended up in the hospital for a few days. It coincided with her 3rd birthday, and resulted in some separation anxiety issues where she started wanting us to be in the room with her until she falls asleep. We tried to “fight” it – reminding her she’s a big girl, telling her she can play on her own, etc., but it was all causing her to get more wound up, so right now we’re laying down with her until she falls asleep. I agree that we need to get out of her room but haven’t figured out a good approach that doesn’t lead to making her go to sleep even later than she already does. Hopefully it’s something that she’ll just grow out of.