When do toddlers stop napping?
If you’re asking when do toddlers stop napping, it is likely due to one of two things:
Your toddler happily takes a nap if offered, and will sleep for a couple of hours, but maybe you’re ready to move on to the “no nap life”, or maybe nights are becoming a little bit messy.
Your toddler fights nap time tooth and nail, yet you feel like they still need a nap/think they are too young to drop it just yet.
If your toddler is younger than 3 and fighting their nap, they most likely will go back to napping again in the coming weeks. Keep offering and stay consistent! And please believe I’m not just saying this to be cute. I KNOW how hard it is, because I’m currently in the thick of it with my 2 year old. The facts are that the VAST majority of kids aren’t ready to drop their nap until 3-5 years of age. But that may seem like a pretty large age range for when kids drop their last nap….what gives?
I’m about to chat science with ya, so buckle up.
When do toddlers stop napping according to science:
According to this theory, the time at which toddlers drop their nap depends less on their age, and more on the development of an area of the brain responsible for short term memory called the hippocampus. When young kids are napping, they are processing memories and storing them into the long term memory area of the brain called the cortex. Some kids have a smaller short term memory storage capacity (“memory bucket”, if you will) than others at the same age. These kids with the smaller memory bucket may need to keep napping longer than their same age counterparts with larger memory buckets. Napping frees up space in the hippocampus to allow more information/memories to come in… our bodies are pretty freakin cool, right??
If you need it broken down further (like I did) here we go:
Cortex=long term memory storage
Hippocampus=short term memory storage
If underdeveloped, “memory bucket” fills up faster and the child needs a nap to move memories to the cortex.
If fully developed, the child is able to carry on throughout the day without a nap and all the memories stored throughout the day gets moved to the cortex during overnight sleep.
That study highlights how important napping is to a young child’s memory and how they process information. Forcing the last nap to drop too early isn’t the way to go. Instead, you can keep offering the nap, or at least present it as quiet time so if they fall asleep, great! And if they don’t, at least they were given the opportunity to try, and at least rest their body.
If you found this helpful, but need a little bit more on the topic of dropping the final nap, I’ve got you covered!
And if you just need help getting your young toddler back on the right track when it comes to naps, I would love to help you!
