From our experience, once toddlers establish a one nap a day routine, it is really useful to not let them sleep past 3pm. Codi, has lunch first at around 11:30pm and goes to sleep at 12:15 or 12:30pm and wakes around 2 to 2:30pm. When he wakes I give him water mixed with cold freshly squeezed juice in a sippy cup or sometimes warmed milk flavored with a little milo.

Day time nap
If they are sleeping 2 hours in the day time, it is a good idea to not let them over sleep their daytime nap. If they wake up anytime past 3:30pm or close to 4pm, I found that my son would wake up screaming, crying and difficult to settle. In my experience toddlers shouldn't go down to sleep past 3pm and if they do, only let them sleep for an hour. Our son would make up any time lost during the day at night.

At the age of 18 months 1.5 to 2 hour daytime sleep is enough, any longer and they will wake up too early in the morning. Another issue is, if he doses off to sleep in the car before he's due to sleep, and I try to transfer him to his cot, he stays awake and rolls around for hours and pushes out the routine and then wakes up really upset. One trick we realized to do, was if he made moves, when he came inside the house from the car, to play with his toys, he was not ready for his full nap and we would delay putting him down for his nap.

Generally, it's only around 15-20mins and then he's begging for a sleep. It's better for them to be ready to sleep than rolling around in their cot for one hour then having to get them up, as they won't sleep and then put them back down when they beg to at 3pm. They won't get their full nap sleep and will be very cranky when they wake up at it's too late in the day. So it's better when you are late putting them to sleep say instead of 12:15 on the dot, to let them say hello to their toys when they get into the house and wait until they then feel like sleeping again.

15-20mins delay sleep going down before 1pm is better than a 3pm sleep. Codi knows in the afternoon we go for walks or do something, so it really puts his time clock out. At this age they will begin to delay their naps more and more towards a 1pm - 2pm or 2pm - 3pm sleep. So getting them to sleep in this window is important.

Generally, this progresses into 2's, then onwards, I believe they begin to have a 30min quite nap as they approach the age of three. An afternoon sleep always stays between 1-3pm. When they wake up, afternoon tea energizes them until tea time. It will be interesting to see how Codi goes past 18 months and see if this process occurs. I will then update this article with my expriences.

My advice, once you've worked out and have established a good sleep routine during the day and night, is to follow your instincts as well and trial a few different things and see what works best under different conditions, so you maintain your sleep routines for your toddler.