Help with post-nap

September 17, 2013 8:52 PM

My three year old has a very hard time waking up from his nap in the afternoon. Today he cried and screamed and complained for almost an hour. Help me find a way to avoid this.

He's been cranky after is naps for a long time, so much so that we just dropped his nap altogether six months ago because the wake up tantrum was so intolerable. But now he is going to be napping every day at preschool and today he was super, super unhappy. Nothing I said or did comforted him, I don't think it's anything specific to the school environment because he is the same way if he falls asleep in the car on a weekend - total pill when he wakes up from his nap.

I don't think the problem is an overall lack of sleep or overtiredness. He goes to bed by 8:30, has a consistent bedtime ritual, and wakes himself up before 6 many mornings (UUUUUGH).

When I first tried to tackle this problem I experimented with a protein snack right before nap. No dice. At school they eat lunch right before nap time.

His favorite food - blueberries - will work about half the time. Other half, he stands there sobbing inconsolably and shoving blueberries in his mouth. Hilarious and heartrending.

A TV show works but then he throws a tantrum 30 minutes later when I turn the TV off, and there's no TV at school or in the car on the way one from school.

Music in the car does not help.

Validating his feelings does not help.

Reasoning with him does not help.

Ignoring him does not help.

Hugging him and kissing him does not help.

Singing to him does not help.

Cuddling does not help.

What am I missing?

posted by bq to Human Relations (23 answers total)

Ask the preschool for help?

Maybe try videoing his reaction after a nap to show them the havoc it causes.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:02 PM on September 17, 2013

Response by poster: Since he wakes up from his nap at school, they will soon become acquainted with this phenomenon.
posted by bq at 9:11 PM on September 17, 2013

Does he definitely have to nap in preschool? I was a no-nap-ever-nuh-uh! toddler, and they allowed me to sit quietly and do a few different super-quiet activities during nap time, as long as I stayed in my own little zone. I remember playing with plush dolls, coloring, and building with foam blocks. If another kid woke up from their nap early, they were allowed to do a quiet activity, too. Do you know if your preschool might have any alternatives like this?
posted by Mizu at 9:44 PM on September 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

Especially without a nap, he may need closer to 12 hours of nighttime sleep. (Three-year-olds generally need 12-14 hours of sleep per day.) If it takes him half an hour to fall asleep, he's only getting 9 hours of sleep at night. An EARLIER bedtime may make him sleep longer in the morning; kids wake up when they wake up, but their going-to-sleep time is considerably easier to manipulate and adjust. (Although that may be sucky for your family life in terms of cutting off evening togetherness time, if he gets more sleep you may have more quality togetherness time even if less quantity.) My kids have blackout shades so when they're going to bed for the night (in the summer) when the sun is still out, I can still black out the room and put them to bed nice and early.

Also try maybe juice when he wakes up for a quick sugar hit? But I think with only 9-9.5 hours of nighttime sleep, he's probably REALLY TIRED.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:54 PM on September 17, 2013 [19 favorites]

Luckily my wife is still awake. She teaches 3 year olds so I asked her.

She says if the parent somehow wins and the kid gets no nap then they get set up at a table with books. But the idea is basically what Mizu describes in that the kid gets a quiet activity.

Best suggestion from her was to set up some sort of reward system where the kid gets something if they wake up from the nap nicely. Sticker, stamp on hand, mark on chart, whatever. I got baseball cards when I was a kid.

Now, I also know that I'm a giant fart face if I'm forced out of bed right after I wake up. So I set my alarm for 30-60 minutes before I actually need to get up so that I can lay in the bed for a while. Maybe not the healthiest thing in the world, but it works. Maybe you can start waking him up before nap time is over but give him time to just not be up yet.

But again, that's based on 27 year old me and not a small child.
posted by theichibun at 9:59 PM on September 17, 2013

I was a no-nap kid, and napping still makes me feel terrible.

When I went to preschool, I did quiet activities during nap. (My mom was the director.)

A random thing: Any chance he's dehydrated? Not drinking enough water unpleasantly amplifies the bad nap feeling.
posted by purpleclover at 10:41 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is he waking up on his own from the nap? My daughter was way better when she woke up of her own volition as opposed to being woken up by someone or something.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 10:52 PM on September 17, 2013

Did you see this FPP about nap science today? It concerns itself with adults, but a point that resonated for me was that once you go beyond either 20 of 45 minutes, it's thought that you should nap for 90 minutes, to allow yourself to make it through all stages of sleep. Otherwise you awaken disoriented—potentially for over an hour thereafter. Maybe your kid's naps are too long/short.
posted by mumkin at 1:09 AM on September 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

BIG caveat: I'm not a parent, but...

I was going to say what Eyebrows McGee said. At age 3, my nephews and nieces were all going to bed at 7, and waking up 6-7 the next morning. I have also heard that, counter-intuitively, little kids often actually sleep longer if you put them to bed a little earlier.

So I second the idea that he's probably mad at being woken up because he's still tired. And he's still tired because 8:30 is a bit late for bedtime at his age.
posted by Salamander at 1:53 AM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Another vote for trying earlier bedtime. My 3 year old has lights out at 7, except for a small reading light. He looks at a few books in bed and calls for us to turn that light out around 7:15. He's asleep by 7:30, and he wakes up between 5:30-6:30 am. He used to be pretty cranky after nap almost to the level of yours, I think daycare has somehow worked some teacher magic to get him to wake up more quietly to not bother the other kids (sorry, I have no idea how they did it, but he definitely saves his letting loose for us at home).
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 2:36 AM on September 18, 2013

I'd second the idea of a drink (for the three-year-old). Not sure whether it was the sugar or just thirst but when mine were crabby at the same time each day that seemed to be the problem and a carton of juice often worked like magic.
posted by Segundus at 3:56 AM on September 18, 2013

Our eldest daughter invariably woke from daytime naps (when we were able to get her to take one) in a terrible mood, often to the point of zombie-like hysteria for up to an hour. I'm talking ages 1-4 I guess. As a result we gradually stopped trying to get her to nap during the day, which avoided the problem. She typically didn't nap at preschool either. She's 6 now, and still never naps during the day.

Our second daughter (now 3) naps quite readily during the day, and never wakes up in a foul mood.

Both sleep about 12 hours / night (typically 8.30 - 6.30).

I don't know if it has any bearing, but as a child I could never ever see the point of sleeping during the day, and hated being made to. Only now as an overworked adult getting 6h sleep / night do I often yearn for a daytime nap, if only I had the time.

So I guess I'm saying it's just innate, nothing you can do about it, and feel free to stop daytime naps if he gets adequate sleep at night.
posted by snarfois at 4:01 AM on September 18, 2013

When my preschooler has that kind of wake up, it's usually due to either bad dreams (amplified considerably with transitions like the one to preschool), or waking up in the wrong part of his sleep cycle (falling asleep in the car, having to pee, whatever wakes him up.) For him that time is about 90 minutes, and around the one hour mark he sometimes half-wakes and rolls over--any chance you or daycare is fully waking him during what's actually a half-waking? Could his room be dimmed more to help him sleep longer? (My son's daycare usually pulls the curtains.)
posted by tchemgrrl at 4:02 AM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

My 4yo kid is like this. We are thankfully outgrowing naps. But our nap wake up strategy was to open her door and window, give her a nudge, and let her wake up on her own.

Also, maybe a shorter nap. I personally find that if I nap for longer than an hour, I feel like complete ass. We limit kid's naps to an hour so it doesn't screw up bedtime too much.
posted by gnutron at 4:42 AM on September 18, 2013

My daughter only just dropped her day nap recently (she's 4) and will still occasionally have one if it's a particularly trying day or she's ill. She also wakes up like a goddamn angry bear. So during the nap dropping period (when she started kindy and did quiet time instead of naps since she takes a long time to go to sleep) we moved bedtime all the way to 7pm (from 8:30 ish). Sometimes before, sometimes after, but mostly she is in bed at 7pm. She wakes some time between 6 and 7. Prior to dropping the nap she was a 9 hours overnight (or thereabouts) and up to 3 during the day. The early bedtime was absolutely necessary, even though it didn't feel like it since she wasn't having massive difficulties during the evening, or waking up early. But when we shifted the bedtime, she went to sleep even easier than before, stayed asleep until the same time, and generally seemed happier for it.

She takes as long as she needs to wake, unless she is oversleeping and we have a deadline. So she can lay in bed and ramble to herself, poke her toys, whatever she wants. She just comes downstairs when she's ready. If we do have to wake her up I tend to use music and I stay right there, really really close, usually holding her. So I'll sit on the bed with her, rubbing her back as the music goes, and explain what is happening - "it's time to get up sweetie, we're doing X now - once you're awake you need to Y and Z okay?" and that seems to help. Sometimes she needs a solid 10 minutes of snuffling, sometimes 10 minutes of being left alone.

But, I rarely ever wake her up. It's just not worth it.
posted by geek anachronism at 5:03 AM on September 18, 2013

If dropping his nap was working well for him, the preschool is going to have to let him stay up.
posted by pracowity at 5:09 AM on September 18, 2013

Have you tried waking him slowly? It probably won't help at school, but I found that my daughter, even as a toddler, was much better at waking up when, say, thirty minutes before she needed to get up, I'd sneak in and nudge her, just a little, and say that this was a warning, and she could have another [x] minutes. I'd do thirty, fifteen, and five minute warnings, and usually by the time she had to be up, she was ok with it.

As a warning, it does potentially set you up for a very long wakeup when school comes around--she prefers to be woken like this at all times, which I could do without, but reverting to an alarm clock or single wakeup call is quite the dramatic scene.
posted by MeghanC at 6:34 AM on September 18, 2013

Suggestions. Earlier bed time, he's not napping he's dropping into full on REM sleep when he's supposed to just be resting and is finding it hard to wake up. Making naps shorter might also help, 15 minutes or so, so he doesn't drop into deep sleep. Give him a nice glass of juice or a juice box to sip as he wakes up, he may be dehydrated and/or low on blood sugar. My nephew had real problems with sugar levels that weren't discovered until he was 5, and while protein is great sometimes they just need a quick sugar hit until you can get slower acting foods time to work. The blueberries make me wonder if it's blood sugars or dehydration.

Letting him wake up slowly, maybe starting some soft music to wake him and then let him linger in bed for a while and wake up slowly. Is he cranky when he wakes himself up after a nap or just when woken up? If so maybe just let him sleep until he wants to get up.

I know all kids are different but my niece and nephew where pulling a total of almost 12 hours of sleep at that age.
posted by wwax at 7:40 AM on September 18, 2013

We have the same problem but my three-year-old seems to wake up okay at preschool. They give her a lot of space and tell her she can sit quietly for as long as she wants on her mat. At home, the only thing that consistently works is going outside with a snack and looking for the neighborhood cats. My daughter also sleeps 11-12 hours total a day so perhaps both our kids are sleep deprived.
posted by JuliaKM at 8:35 AM on September 18, 2013

My daughter is extremely volatile after waking and we've tried everything you have. The thing that works best with her is giving her time to herself first. We use an OK to Wake clock with her and that helps some. I set it to light up 15 min after she usually actually wakes in the morning, and she knows not to get out of her room till it's green, she'll just play by herself till then. For naps I set the nap timer, which is just an alarm and I thought she'd hate being woken by it but she keeps telling me "I love my nap timer!", so who knows. I limit the length of her nap because I found when she napped till 4 it was much worse than if I cut it off at 3:30.

When I have to wake her (forgot to set the timer or need to go out unexpectedly) I try to do something surprising but quiet. Crawl into her room and pretend to be a cat or something weird like that. Nothing overwhelming, just something slightly different to distract her. That doesn't always work but it has a higher success rate than just going in and waking her.

Once she's up I try not to talk to her too much or overwhelm her with options. She'll stay grumpy but she's much less likely to have a tantrum out of the house (YMMV) so we'll often go out if her mood seems especially bad.

I'm not sure how to apply that to school, other than to say that allowing him to wake slowly and quietly and have a bit of personal space is probably for the best.
posted by waterlily at 8:51 AM on September 18, 2013

Here's the thing, all the manipulating of naptimes/bedtimes and the like are great suggestions, but you may want to be prepared that this is just how the kiddo works. Some kids just wake up angry and awful and it takes a while to get out of that.

I am one of those people. My son is also one of those people. We are inhuman for a decent amount of time around waking up, both in the mornings and after naps. My folks have videos of me as a wee preverbal thing being a complete and total cranky shit after waking up. My mom says it was every day, morning and naptime.

My now 4 year old is the same way. We just leave him be for a while until he snaps out of it. It's the only way. Despite the heartwrenching sad sad pathetic cranky hilarious sobbing. I mean, it's one thing if the sleeping/napping is throwing her off otherwise, but for my kiddo (and me), it goes away after a bit, and the munchkin is back to a sweet temperment after an hour of crankypants.

I, for one, call bullshit on catnaps. I cannot nap at all during the day unless it's for a solid 3-4 hours, and even then I wake up a holy monster. (which made me INSANE when he was a wee one and everyone and their mother was saying "sleep when the baby sleeps!" which NO. Any lying down just made me into a sleepy, cranky, holy terror for the entire fucking day and did nothing at all to prevent sleep deprivation. Good times!)
posted by kumquatmay at 10:19 AM on September 18, 2013

Nthing the earlier bedtime, much earlier. Kids that age usually need at _least_ 12 hours a night.

Good luck.
posted by ravioli at 1:05 PM on September 18, 2013

One of my kids got totally hysterical when he woke up from naps at that age. There was nothing I or anyone else could do to calm him. It took him 5-10 minutes to come out of it. I just stayed near him and ignored him. The rest of the time he was fine, an easy mellow kid. He outgrew it and so will your kid.
posted by mareli at 11:55 AM on September 19, 2013