Does your 3 year old still take naps?

So as my daughter approaches 3, I noticed her nap and sleep schedule is just getting more and more chaotic and leaves me overstimulated at the end of the day. It’s a lot harder to lay her down for a nap and she takes an hour or 2 to fall asleep. But by then it’s too late for a nap, either she falls asleep late or I just let her stay up till bed time. If she doesn’t nap exactly at her nap time her whole schedule is thrown off and I’m up late with her.. Should 3 year olds still take routine naps? Is she growing out of naps?

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I’m going thru the same thing thing with my almost 3 year old

Ideally Naps are good for kids up to the age of 5. But you need to set a limit to what time they will nap. Dont let them nap after 4pm otherwise you will fight bedtime routine. They process so much information and their brain is constantly making synaps connections, etc. Id say from around your schedule. But do not let them nap 4 hours before bedtime. Meaning if you put them bed at 8, they need to be waking up from their nap by 4pm.

My 3 almost 4 year old stopped naps on weekends about 6 months ago otherwise he would be up super late. Daycare requires a nap for him when he’s there, but I’ve requested them to shorten it to an hour vs 1.5-2hrs. He starts to get a little cranky by the end of the day sometimes without one when it’s close to bedtime otherwise does fine. We still do “quiet time” for an hour where he stays in his room and does quiet activities like look at books, color, puzzles, etc so I can still have a little break.

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