You help your son blow out his first birthday candle and Great Aunt Lilly proclaims, “He’s a toddler now!” Not so fast! The period between twelve and eighteen months places a child on a one way bridge to the future. Infancy is a thing of the past and toddlerhood is straight ahead. A baby still? Not really, but neither is he a toddler and that is the key to understanding this phase of growth.

Take a couple of photos because the child leaving infancy will not resemble the child entering toddlerhood six months down the road. This is a period of metamorphosis when his potential for learning seems limitless, his budding curiosity unquenchable and his energy level never seems to diminish.

This is a period of great of exchange: baby food is exchanged for table food; the highchair for booster seat; finger feeding replaced with spoon; babbling sounds transition to speaking, the first unsteady steps are conquered by strides of confidence, and the list goes on. Moving forward at a lighting pace, your pretoddler is driven towards a new level of independence, equipped with a mind of his own. Whether you’re ready or not his natural inclination and challenge of “I do myself” will become increasingly apparent, not to mention frustrating.

The emerging pretoddler is acutely aware of self, although at twelve months of age he is not fully absorbed in the self importance of me, myself and I. (Hang on, that blessing of his nature will show up around twenty months of age.) Try taking something away and a scream of protest is likely. Remove him from a dangerous object and his curiosity lures him right back. His favorite foods suddenly become not-so-favorite and in a few months “No!” will become his default word whether he understands the question or not.

The natural inclination within pretoddlers towards independence is very strong yet, unpredictable. He is always in motion and not easily restrained, directed or controlled, but he needs to be! Boundaries will be tested, rules understood as suggestions, and curiosity will become a force to reckoned with. How will you meet these unfolding challenges? That is the big question. The answer begins with understanding the various growth transitions of the next one-hundred and eighty days of your pretoddler’s life. (For pricing details please visit our store at www.gfi.org)

Timing and signs of readiness for dropping naps is always a question for parents, even those who have done it before. It can be hard to remember all of the details. Here is a synopsis of various naps, timing of when to drop them, signs that your child is ready to drop them, and methods for doing so.

Dropping the Fourth Nap

First, we need to define nap times for newborns. I consider any sleep that happens after 7 PM to be bedtime. So a newborn who eats around 7ish, then goes to sleep (this could be considered a nap by some), and wakes again to eat around 10ish, in my definition would have gone to bed after the 7ish feeding. My reason for this is that baby never drops that sleep between 7 and 10. Baby drops the feeding around 10 at some point.

The fourth nap is the nap that occurs between 4ish and 7ish PM.

AGE: I have found the average age for this nap to be dropped is 4 months old. Some are ready earlier (but really no earlier than 3 months) and some are ready later (but few later than 5 months).

SINGS OF READINESS: For most babies, the sign for this nap to be dropped is that baby really doesn’t sleep well for it anymore. Note the word anymore. This is a typical fussy time of day for babies when many don’t sleep well in general. Don’t assume your 4 week old doesn’t need this nap because he isn’t sleeping well. By four months of age, baby is most likely playing around during “naptime” instead of sleeping. Some babies might sleep for this nap but then have a hard time going down after the 7ish feeding. Others might have sudden disrupted sleep at night.

Another sign would be that your child is ready for a 4 hour schedule. A 4 hour schedule will naturally drop the fourth nap.

METHODS FOR DROPPING: One easy method is to move to the 4 hour schedule if your baby is ready. Many babies will naturally drop this fourth nap as they move to the 4 hour schedule. As you extend your schedule, you drop feedings. As you drop feedings, you drop number of naps. Other babies are ready to drop this nap before they are ready to move to a 4 hour schedule. This was true for both of my children.

If your child is ready to drop the nap but not ready for a 4 hour schedule, you just skip the nap. Take note that the last two feedings might then move closer together because a baby can go longer between feedings if he is asleep than he can when he is awake. He also might need a bit earlier of a bedtime (30 minutes or so), at least for a few days while he adjusts. Some babies will be fussy for a few days as they adjust to the new sleeping arrangement.

One note, if you think your child is ready to drop this nap and is still taking a 1.5-2 hour nap at this time, try shortening the nap at first. Perhaps down to 60 minutes, 45 minutes, or 30 minutes.

Dropping the Third Nap

The next nap you drop is the evening nap. By the time baby is ready to drop it, it is usually a short 45 minute nap. Your baby will be on a 4 hour schedule by this point, so the nap will again be somewhere between 4 and 7 PM.

AGE: According to On Becoming Babywise I and II, this happens relatively young (around 6-8 months).

This can vary from child to child. The youngest it should be will is 6 months. The average seems to be 8 months. My son didn’t drop his until he was about 10 months old. I was reading Babywise and realized he was not supposed to need it, so we dropped it. My daughter didn’t fully drop it until she was 11 months old. one day

This can vary from child to child. The youngest it should be will is 6 months. The average seems to be 8 months. My son didn’t drop his until he was about 10 months old. I was reading Babywise and realized he was not supposed to need it, so we dropped it. My daughter didn’t fully drop it until she was 11 months old. one day

SIGNS OF READINESS: It can be hard to tell just when your baby is ready to drop this nap because it is already short. One sign is if your baby doesn’t seem tired enough for bed after napping in the evening. Other signs can be the same as the fourth nap: baby doesn’t sleep for that nap at all, baby doesn’t go to bed well after taking that nap, or baby doesn’t sleep well at night.

METHODS FOR DROPPING: This is a nap you skip. Some babies might be able to go “cold turkey,” or dropping all at once. If you choose this method, expect some fussiness as your baby adjusts. Be ready to be an entertainer. You could get a new toy or book or something to pull out only at that time of day to keep the baby happier. You could also leave the house to keep him distracted. When my oldest dropped this nap, I remember he was cranky during the stretch for several days, maybe even a week, but his body soon adjusted. before her morning nap and still waking her up from the nap at the same time. I shortened the morning nap. I also added about 10-15 minutes to her waketime between her two naps. These actions fixed things and she was back to sleeping for both naps: 1.5 hours in the morning and 2-2.5 in the afternoon. For some children, this morning nap might need to be shortened more than that. As I said, Kaitlyn is a sleeper. She is still taking a long morning nap though it is shorter than it was.

Another method is a weaning process. In this approach, you only give the nap if baby needs it that day. Some days baby takes the nap, other days he doesn’t. This is the method I used with my daughter. We started around 8 months to take it as a weaning process. If we were out in the evening, she didn’t nap. If we were home, I waited to put her down only if she showed signs of needing it. If she was awake and started showing signs of needing the nap 30 minutes before her normal feeding time, I fed her early and put her to bed early. At first, every few days she didn’t nap. Soon, it was every other day. Later, she napped only every few days. As I said earlier, she didn’t fully drop this nap until she was 11 months old.

Dropping this nap might move bedtime up.

Dropping the Morning Nap

When you drop the morning nap, you move from two naps to one. Dropping the morning nap is not as sad as it may seem. You suddenly have a large chunk of time when baby doesn’t have to be home! You baby will also most likely take a longer afternoon nap once the morning nap is dropped, so you have a longer stretch in the afternoon to get things done. This also gives you more opportunity for quality learning opportunities and activities in the morning hours.

AGE: Among the different “–wise” books, the ages for dropping the morning nap range from 14-22 months, and all are possible. Some toddlers do drop the nap as early as 14 months. My son was 17 months. My daughter is now approaching 19 months and still holding on to her morning nap. I am hoping for her to drop it soon, and every so often I try, but she isn’t quite ready.

SIGNS OF READINESS: For some children, this can be one of the easier naps to tell he is ready to drop. For others, it can be a real guessing game.

Classic signs of readiness are when your toddler is ready to drop this nap, he will still sleep really well in the morning, but for the afternoon nap, he will hardly sleep at all. This is when he is ready to drop the morning nap. This is how my son was.

Another classic sign is your toddler might not sleep for the morning nap but sleeps for the afternoon nap.

For some toddlers, things can be trickier. There is a transition time when the toddler isn’t ready to drop the morning nap, but doesn’t need a full nap anymore. My daughter was this way. When Kaitlyn was about 14 months, she started to not sleep well for both naps. This was extremely odd to me. She has always been a really good napper. She loves to sleep. I started to wonder if perhaps she was ready to drop the morning nap. It surprised me because she didn’t drop her third nap until she was 11 months old—I didn’t think she would be ready to drop the morning nap so soon after dropping the evening nap.

She wasn’t ready. Kaitlyn missed her morning nap once a week for church. She would then come home, eat lunch, and go to sleep for about 4 hours–making up for her missed morning nap. She was very, very tired when we got home. Tired enough that she usually didn’t eat her lunch very well. Based on this, I figured she wasn’t really ready to drop her morning nap.

Instead, I started lengthening her waketime

Others might be going through teething or some other disruption, which causes parents to wonder if it is time to drop the nap. Some might be able to start a weaning process from this nap where some days they take the nap, others they don’t. More on this is explained below.

METHODS FOR DROPPING: Your toddler will take his nap after lunch. For us, naptime started at 1 PM. Some toddlers need naptime to start earlier than this, at least for a period of time. You can have lunch earlier if needed and nap start earlier. Once he is back to normal, you can have the nap move to your (and his) optimal time.

With my son, we dropping this nap cold turkey just as we had previous naps. This is one option.

You can also try a weaning process. I find this nap harder to do a weaning process for. If your toddler doesn’t take a morning nap, the afternoon nap times are very different from when your toddler does. It can be hard to plan your day. If you have an open enough schedule that you can work around this, weaning is a good first step for you. If not, you will have to wait until your toddler is more ready before dropping it. You can also consider simply being more flexible for a week or two and allowing the weaning process, planning to hopefully fully drop the nap after that.

If you think your child is ready to drop the morning nap, you can always give it a try. My guess is after two-three days in a row, you will have a good idea if he is really ready or not. I suggest having other things to do to keep your toddler preoccupied. Errands to run, people to visit, etc.

I tried dropping this nap with Kaitlyn a few weeks ago. Day one was fine. Day two, she started to fall asleep while eating lunch. I could see she wasn’t quite ready yet.

In my experience, toddlers are not as cranky after dropping this nap as they are for others. When we dropped this nap with my son, the afternoon nap went to 3.5 hours instead of 2 hours and bedtime moved up an hour.

As your child gets older, the nap will shorten and/or bedtime will move back slightly.

Dropping the Afternoon Nap

The afternoon nap is the only nap of the day. Your child will move from the nap to rest time. I haven’t reached this milestone yet (though I believe we are approaching it with my son). I will summarize the information as listed in On Becoming Preschoolwise (page 100).

AGE: This is typically around four years of age, though age depends on the sleep needs of the individual child.

SIGNS OF READINESS: Your child will stay awake through his scheduled naptime.

METHODS FOR DROPPING: This nap should be “dropped” as a weaning process. You have your child lay quietly on his bed. You allow him to have a book or two to look at. You tell him if he feels tired, he should go to sleep.

If your child falls asleep but does so later than usual, wake him at the time naptime would normally be over, not X number of hours after falling asleep. He will likely be cranky from a short nap, so plan on him doing something to transition out of the nap (for example, watch a movie).

Over time, your child will nap some days and rest others. The transition period from naptime to rest time can take six months to one year. He will slowly decrease the number of naps he takes in a day.

If your child is cranky on days he didn’t take a nap, you can put him to bed thirty minutes early.

Notes for Dropping Naps

• Children are often cranky/fussy for a few days or so while their bodies adjust to the nap that has been dropped. Don’t mistake normal crankiness for signs that he wasn’t ready.
• Bedtime often needs to be moved up after dropping a nap, at least for a week or two while your child adjusts. For some naps, your child will move back to “normal” bedtime. For others, normal is now earlier.
• Sometimes the other naps are longer after dropping a nap.
• For babies and toddlers, dropping a nap doesn’t necessarily mean less sleep in the day. They simply rearrange the times they sleep.
• Don’t be afraid to try dropping the nap if you think your child is ready. If you try to drop a nap and find your child wasn’t ready, you can always add the nap back in.

My blog: http://babywisemom.blogspot.com/

I think one of the hardest things for humans to do is to be happy where they are in life. “The grass is always greener on the other side.” This isn’t always necessarily a bad trait. It motivates us to improve our lives and surroundings. It helps us to improve ourselves. But it can also help us to be unhappy with our current situation and always look hopefully to the future without enjoying the present. It is this weakness I wish to address today.

I talk about this often, perhaps because it is something that I have trouble with and find myself continually working on it. I encourage everyone (including myself) to learn to enjoy each stage of life for what it is. I often hear young mothers long for the future when they will have time to do all the things they want to do, and older mothers long for those fun times with their young children. It is good to have goals and good to have fond memories, but we mustn’t let these two things rob us of the life we are currently living.

Let’s take stages of our children’s lives. I have often shared that my least favorite stage is the newborn stage. I much prefer the toddler stage, and I love having conversations with my son. I have good friends whose favorite stage is the newborn stage. Everyone has their preferred stages. When we recognize that each stage has its benefits and its drawbacks, we can learn to be happy where we are. There isn’t a stage where everything is perfect. You have long nights of newborn life, tantrums of toddlerhood, talking back of pre-teens, and power struggles with teenagers. We minimize these difficulties through applied principles of the –wise series, but we still encounter difficulties along the way. We also have the good qualities of stages. Newborns don’t talk back and are content to cuddle with you, toddlers are constantly learning and are fascinated with every detail of life around them, pre-teens amaze us with their intelligence, and in teen years we can start to really enjoy the fruits of our labors as our children-turning-adults make wise decisions. Whatever stage(s) your child(ren) is at, I encourage you to focus on the things you love about it—enjoy each good thing that you will never see again from that child.

There is also a major lifestyle difference among all the stages of life. As a mother with two young children, I have certain times of day that we I “stuck” home, except in those extenuating circumstances when we take advantage of flexibility in our schedule. For naptime, we are home each day. This limits the number of hours we can spend running errands or playing at the park. Also, no matter how well behaved your children are, it is hard to run errands with them.

Right now, I am also pregnant with my third child. Pregnancy is hard on me; I am one of those women who is really, really sick 24 hours a day for 9 months. One day a few weeks ago, a sweet friend of mine dropped by unexpectedly with dinner for my family. This friend of mine has no children. She and her husband have been trying to have children for 4-5 years. They have tried in-vitro several times without success, and are now waiting with many other parents to be chosen as adoptive parents.

I looked at her that day as she stood in my kitchen, hair all perfect, body unaffected by children, able to come and go as she pleases, and for a fleeting moment, I envied her and longed for the day to come when I could be back to that position in life. It quickly passed me, though, and I realized she, too, must envy me. I have children. I might have a hard time being pregnant, but she will likely never know what it feels like to be pregnant. She lives each day wondering if it will be the day she gets a phone call telling her they have been chosen to adopt a baby. She might have freedom right now, but she doesn’t want it. She longs to be in the position I am: sick, pregnant, and stuck and home each afternoon as the children take a nap. I knew my desires were selfish and that I needed to realign myself and be grateful for the many blessings I have.

I have also watched women whose children are grown and getting married fall into a state of depression as they “lost” their children. They went through the marriage of their children unhappy, mourning the loss of a child rather than celebrating the addition of one. What a tragedy and loss of a moment that will never happen again.

You will be much happier in life as you come to be able to enjoy each stage of your life for what it is. Some stages will be harder for you than others. There will be stages where you wish you could freeze everyone and live that moment forever. Find the good of where you are. Relish every moment. Time does not wait while you feel sorry for yourself; take advantage of each moment you have in life, and you can be truly happy.

My blog: http://babywisemom.blogspot.com/

My darling two and half year old began asking me to potty train about a week before vacation, so I told her we would do it upon our return. She did not forget, and immediately asked again about it once once we were home sweet home. Isabelle’s best friend has been potty training and therefore Isabelle is enamored with the glamor of “wearing panties”. So while Mommy wasn’t completely sure all the readiness signs were there we went to the Mommy mecca, Target, and stocked up on all the necessary supplies-especially the coveted panties.

I’ll admit up front while I know its a necessary thing, I’d rather change diapers for another year. It’s selfish of me, so I realized I needed to suck it up and just do it. I had taken my Potty Training 1-2-3 book on vacation and skimmed it. Also, my Mom had trained all 3 of her children in 1 day, me being the oldest trained in 1977, so if she could do it so can I, I thought.

The big day began with a cute pair of Minnie Mouse panties that were wet before breakfast ended-this I did not understand as she hadn’t even drank anything yet. Moving on to a princess pair and the doll demo began, wet again before the doll had the chance to even “drink” something. “I can do this, show no frustration,” I say to myself, on to panties #s 3-12 in less than 4 hours. I noticed she was going about every 10-15 minutes! Now I had stocked up but I thought surely 12 pairs would be enough.

As nap approached I happily put a diaper on my daughter, loved on her lots, and told her that her body was just not ready yet. Phew, I thought, let’s just put this off for a while. But I underestimated my daughter’s love for wearing the panties, she did not stop asking. So I contacted my Mommy mentor who has 4 potty trained children, and her advice was to try again, it will probably click if I will persevere longer than half a day.

That’s when my husband said he would happily do the potty training on his “Daddy daughter day” while I was at work. Feeling my Mommy ego a little wounded, I agreed with the stipulation that he at least do the same skimming of the book I had.

Daddy was very sweet to Mommy when she came home that night in telling me that while Isabelle had only had 2 accidents it was because I had done the hard part of the training a week earlier.

Over the next week there were many accidents, specifically when we were out. You see I can clear my schedule for a couple days but staying at home by the potty isn’t realistic for long. There was one particularly bad visit to a bookstore-we lost a pair of princess panties that night.

I was calling potty training “8-9-10 when’s it ever gonna end” by this point. I called my Mommy mentor again, who reassured me it ‘d get better. And then it did…

It did click but it took Isabelle 2 weeks. To me that seemed like forever, but here’s what I learned for the next go around.

-Patience, patience, patience. Again another instance where I needed to keep my expectations realistic. I thought training in 1 to 3 days meant done with accidents in 1-3 days, nope for us that meant 2 weeks.
-Focus on Clean and Dry, not just going in the potty. The more we talked about Clean and Dry the less wet panties we changed.
-Don’t ask your child if they need to go, just take them on a routine set by your experience. We frequently took her while she said the entire way “I don’t need to go!” and then promptly peed a significant amount.
-Figuring out the right reward is important. My daughter loves chocolate so I thought M&M’s would do it. Now I will admit I was tad concerned about having an M&M addicted child in less than 3 days, but what I learned was she was way more motivated by those little dum dum lollipops that she’s done with in just 3 licks. My husband decided he’ll give her one of those for the rest of her life for pooping in the potty!

For the details on the methods of training I used please see the book Potty Training 1-2-3 by the Ezzo’s

In conclusion I asked a GFI friend if I could quote her about her potty training efforts with her second child.

My two-year old is ready to potty train…but her Mommy is not. I keep putting it off, justifying it by the fact that we are in a constant state of change these days. However, when your child continues to come to you to tell she has to pee-pee, and refuses to pee-pee in her diaper…ready or not, it’s time!

So after finding the little potty, I took off daughter’s diaper and let her “play” on the potty. We’ve started to do this during the day, which has been a more relaxed approach to potty training than we took with our first child.

Things have been going well with this approach…until the day I walked into our bedroom and found a pile of two-year old poop perched on my pillow.

We are now using a more supervised method.

Happy Parenting!

Have you heard something in a GFI class and decided you’d handle that when it “becomes a problem” for your child? Let me elaborate on our dilemma.

Our daughter, Isabelle, is 2 and 3/4 (every month counts as we close in on the end of the two’s) and my husband and I love to spend lots of time during our night time routine.  It is a very special family time with cuddles, giggles, book reading, story telling, lullaby singing, and praying.

First let me tell you what we have found beneficial. Several months ago my husband added a time of talking and story telling. We have really enjoyed this as we reflect back on the activities of the day, and find that its a great opportunity to focus on nonconflict prep for the next day, or discussion of that day’s events.

Also, we have been working on clever ways to incorporate our training into the “stories”. For example the big skill we are focusing on currently is first time obediance, immediately. So our main character, usually a princess, will be called by her Mommy throughout the story and Isabelle will appropriately respond “Yes, Mommy coming” for the main character in her high princess voice.

Now I understand for some of you crafting a “story” at bedtime may not be your idea of fun-this is an idea from two sanguine temperments, both of whom are writers. But maybe its an idea you can use as a springboard.

Here’s is the problem.  Our daughter began the “one more story”, “one more song”, “one more minute”. And then the tired crying when told no, Mommy said that was the last one. Don’t we all enjoy a good fit right before bed?

Also, night awakenings with requests to sit in the chair and rock had become more frequent. While the 3 am cuddle is sweet, pregnant Mommy does not enjoy this the next day since she has stopped her morning coffee.

We were taught in our Toddlerwise classes to move the night time books, stories, etc into the living room. The idea is to do all your night time routine out of the child’s room so your child learns that when you enter their bedroom its kiss, hug, and good night- no procrastination.  I even remember having the discussion with my husband about it, and we decided we wanted to wait. After all she wasn’t giving us any problems now…and oh don’t we love our time in the glider with her.

But as we were forwarned the problem started and was intensifying with each night. We knew we must do something as we looked into the future of preparing for the move to a big girl bed and increased freedoms. It was also quite daunting thinking of our future of another little one on the way and Mommy needing the glider.

So we did it, we moved the beloved glider downstairs. There was two weeks with a few tears and many requests for “her chair”. We still do our night routine, but we are now teaching that once we enter the bedroom its off to sleep little one.

It reminds me of the Ezzo’s concept of credit card parenting, we got into some debt in this area and now we are working our way out. As we look back the extra sweet time we had in the glider was good memories for us, but was it best for Isabelle. Yes we are remedying the problem now, but the tears are heart wrenching.

I am frequently talking with parents who make choices for their children based on their own desires for love and comfort, but not realizing that they are not taking what’s best for their child’s healthy sleep habits into mind. While I didn’t realize we were doing this ourselves I now see yet another thing I will do differently with my next child.

Isabelle still asks about her “chair” but the tears have stopped, and the sleep is good! Happy parenting!