10 Tips for Getting Kids to Not Wake up Grumpy
When I stopped nursing Ava back mid-March, I was finally getting the hang of getting her to nap without nursing her to sleep. But then another problem arose and it hit me like a ton of bricks —
She was waking up grumpy.
Like so grumpy. Like screaming, crying, nothing would cheer her up...not even chocolate. So yeah, it was rough on both of us but I was at my wits end.
I didn’t know what to you and so, I posed this problem on my Instagram and so many of you mamas were in the same boat as me. As terrible as I feel that so many of you were also going through toddlers waking up grumpy, at least I knew I wasn’t alone.
And then there were so many of you who had such fantastic advice and were my living, breathing proof that we could find a solution.
And I’m here and happy to report that we are now living, breathing proof of a solution on how to get kids not to wake up grumpy (cue the streamers!). It was thanks to some of you who gave us advice that worked great for us and the problem is completely solved...with a little twist. But I’ll tell you about that in a second.
First, here is all the advice we got for how to get kids not to wake up grumpy, how to get your kids to wake up in a good mood:
- A snack, milk and a book right when they wake up from a nap
- Protein/fat dense snack before nap time
- Skip the nap altogether
- Record her when she’s in a good mood and play the video back to her when she’s grumpy. You can even ask her how she’s feeling in the video and explain to her that she’s “happy,” “excited,” etc.
- Maybe she hasn’t gotten enough sleep so nurse her back to sleep or give her some milk so she can sleep for another hour or so.
- Bring out your Disney Mom voice
- Post-nap snuggles
- Eventually they’ll grow out of it. Give it time!
- Lavender essential oils
- Leave a book in the crib so they can wake up and read to themselves and ease into waking up
And the one tip we got that solved our problem?
We’re no longer napping. I know it doesn’t sound great to no longer have naps at age two but just hear me out — Ava used to wake up from her naps around 3 or 4, she’d be grumpy until 5 or 6pm, and would go to sleep around 8. And it was miserable getting her to go to bed, like 1-3 hours kind of miserable. So now, we have no nap, no 2 hours of grumpiness, ruining my afternoon every single day AND she typically falls asleep with no hassle, happy as can be. And better yet, she even wakes up happier in the mornings too! So I’d yeah, we’ve really won here. We’ve won big time and I sure hope any of you going through this will find a great solution for your family too!
Just know, it eventually ends and you WILL get through it :)
