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Hi guys, Melissa from CloudMom.com, and so your question today from the viewer, at what
age did my children drop the nap? So I do have a couple of videos on napping. I have
one in transitioning from three to two naps, I have one on transitioning from two to one
naps, and I have another video that I'll link to from the post for this blog on my site
on dropping the nap entirely, which is really what I'm talking about today. But this is
just sort of quick summary to talk about when my kids actually dropped the nap, but I'm
doing this in hindsight now because actually when I filmed that last video, Annaliese,
my daughter, my fourth child, was four and now she's getting close to turning five. She's
gonna turn five in a few months so I have sort of that experience and I'm gonna share
that today. So basically, with my kids two of my children dropped the nap at three, and
two dropped the nap after three. My oldest child, Hedley, dropped the nap at age four.
He was napping with his brother who is a year younger. And basically we kind of cut the
nap out for both of them at the same time and the reason was they were staying up late
chatting in their room, so it seemed like it was just a better idea to put everybody
to bed earlier, and they seemed to be showing all the other signs which I talk about in
my video about dropping the nap and not really needing the nap anymore. So anyway, Lachlan
was at three, Hedley was at four, Beckett was at three, Annaliese went way longer then
anyone else. She naps now and still actually, occasionally naps well into her fours and
what happens with Annaliese is that, now most days I find she really resists it. And sometimes
on the weekend I try to give her a short nap of an hour or so. And if she's tired she will
take it, but she doesn't really, really want it, but she did sort of have a few naps a
week well into her fours, I would say until around four and a half even. And for some
reason she just needed that and so that worked. Now it's much more rare. It's really like
if something has gone on the night before, like we had a sleepover last week and she
didn't sleep well at all, so the next day I put her down for a two-hour nap, from 12
to two, and then she went to bed at her regular bedtime. And that day she didn't fight me
so much, she actually wanted the nap. What happens, and is happening with her which happened
with my other kids which I think is interesting to share, is that some of that nap time got
absorbed into their nighttime sleep. So with Annaliese right now, I put her down usually
most nights by 7 o'clock and she sleeps through on a school day until eight the next morning
and on a weekend sometimes even until nine. All my kids sleep really a lot, so I've been
lucky to have good sleepers, but she's sleeping beyond 12 hours, like 13 hours a night sometimes
even 14. So I think that she's kind of taken that nap time and moved it into her nighttime
sleep. And this I found also to be the case with my other children. By the time they got
to be six, seven, eight, nine, they rarely went beyond 12 hours, and actually my oldest
child is nine, now more often sleeps 11 hours a night which I think is normal. He definitely
can go 12 though on a good night. So anyway that has been our experience. Marielle is
still napping usually two hours a day, she's gonna be three very soon. She usually naps
from one to three, I try not to have her nap any later then that and then she's down for
bed by around seven, 7:30, and sleeps through also until around eight the next morning.
So she's sleeping around 14 hours a day at around age three. Now my kids tend to be huge
sleepers, their dad is a huge sleeper, I think it's genetic. I've been lucky in that way
and in some cases not so lucky 'cause when they don't get that sleep, things are not
so easy for me. But anyway that's been my experiences. Other moms please share what
you've gone through when it comes to dropping the nap, at what ages your children dropped
the nap, and how you sort of went about this transition. I would love to hear from you
on my site on CloudMom.com. Thank you so much for watching my videos. Good luck dealing
with these sleep issues with your children and I will see you next time.