12–15 months: dropping to one nap
Two naps have genuinely stopped working, and one is not yet enough. This is the real transition, it takes four to eight weeks, and it goes considerably better with a bridge than with a decision.
3 min read
The move to one nap is the hardest of the nap transitions because of an arithmetic problem. Two naps require three wake windows; one nap requires two much longer ones. At the point a child’s body starts asking for the change, they usually cannot yet tolerate the windows the new arrangement needs.
So for several weeks, two naps is too much sleep and one is too little. That gap is real, it cannot be skipped, and it is the reason this takes weeks rather than days.
The signals that mean it is time
Sustained over three or four weeks. Not a bad fortnight during a leap.
The morning nap is eating the afternoon. A long morning sleep followed by a refused afternoon one, consistently.
Bedtime has stopped working. Long settling, or a cheerful child chatting in the cot for forty minutes.
Early waking has appeared. Too much daytime sleep frequently shows up first as a 5am start.
The bridge
Move the morning nap later in fifteen-minute steps, one step every three or four days, aiming eventually at a single nap starting between 11:30 and 12:30. Do not jump. Each step lets the body clock catch up, and the gradualness is the method rather than a caution.
Run a mixed schedule while you do it. If the single nap finishes before about two o’clock, offer a short second one. If both naps happened, expect to need a later bedtime. Alternating days are not inconsistency here - they are the correct response to a body in transition.
And use early bedtime relentlessly. On one-nap days, bedtime often needs to be an hour earlier than usual for several weeks. This is what prevents the overtiredness that otherwise derails everything.
For a month, run whichever schedule today needs. The bridge is the plan.
Where it lands
A single nap of ninety minutes to two and a half hours around midday, with bedtime back to its normal time. The nap is often short at first - forty-five minutes - and lengthens over several weeks. Total sleep across the day settles around twelve to fourteen hours.
Expect setbacks during teeth, illness and holidays, and expect to go back to two naps occasionally. It does not undo anything.
Getting through the awkward middle
The hardest stretch is the fortnight where one nap is not yet long enough and two no longer fit. During it, the single nap often lasts only forty-five minutes, which leaves a long afternoon and a child who cannot get to bedtime.
Two things help. A short top-up in the pram at three or four o’clock, which takes the edge off without being a real second nap. And bedtime brought forward as far as it needs to go, sometimes to half past five. Both feel like going backwards and both are what carry you across, and both stop being necessary once the midday nap lengthens.
Nursery on a different schedule
If your child is at nursery, this transition often gets decided for you - most rooms move to a single midday nap on the room’s timetable, whatever your child is currently doing at home. That can be abrupt, and it frequently arrives before your child is ready.
What you can control is the rest. Run the mixed schedule at weekends, offer a morning nap on non-nursery days if it is still needed, and use a much earlier bedtime on nursery days. Ask the room whether they can offer a short second nap in the early weeks; many will for a younger child.
When to stop troubleshooting
A child under ten months apparently making this transition, persistent exhaustion regardless of arrangement, or nap refusal alongside illness or poor appetite, are worth discussing with your health visitor.
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