Expert: Dr. Frederick Blount - 5/23/2005

Question
My oldest son is 2 years and 3 months and it is not uncommon for him to sleep 15-17 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period.  He was consitanty on this schedule at his child care provider's home for a little less than one year. I had a baby and was home on leave for 6 weeks during which time I tried getting him down to one long nap in the afternoon, but it did not make him a very "happy camper" and he always had bad behavior on those days, so I went back to two naps.  He stated at a new providers home when I went back to work and started with 1 nap in the middle of the day, he was fine with this for about 2 weeks then shortened that nap (from 2-2 1/2 to about 45 minutes to an hour, seemingly because he was so over-tired by the afternoon so he just cat-napped and that was it) and was also more disagreeable than usual.  So he went back to his 2 long naps and his behavior was back to normal (he is extremely well-behaved for his age and I'm not just saying that because I'm his mom).  We recently had trouble with that provider and changed to yet another new provider who has a relatively structured scheduled which the kids where they take one nap around 12pm, we thought this would be a good change for him, but again it worked for about 1 1/2 - 2 weeks, now the same behavior is repeating itself.  I experimented with his napping a bit over this last weekend and really kept an eye on the clock, he is going to bed between 8 and 8:30pm, wakes up around 6-6:30am (10 hours of sleep), is very well-behaved until about 9am, voluntarily goes down and sleeps hard for about 3 hours (13 hours), gets up, eats lunch, plays and is very good, starts acting up again around 2pm and, again, voluntarily goes down for another 3-4 hours (totals 16-17 hours of sleep) and is asking to go to bed again at 8-8:30pm.
At first I was thinking it might have something to do with the new baby, but this was common behavior before the baby came and the only major differences in him since the baby has been that he wants a bottle more often (and asks for one to go sleep with if he's at home) and potty training has pretty much gone in the opposite direction (he was almost completely potty trained until I was about a month from my due date, but that, I understand, is normal).  Other than those changes he's actually reacted unusually well to his brother with no apparent jealousy at all (so much to the point that if I'm having story-time with him and the baby wakes up I've tried to allow him to fuss a bit while I finish up with the 2 year old, but he (the 2 yr old) demands that I stop reading and go tend to his brother immediately!) So that makes me think it may not have something to do with the baby and may be something medically wrong if it's wrong at all--Should I be worried about him seeming to need that much sleep on a regular basis?  I give him a childrens multi-vitamin daily and his diet is pretty well-rounded in the food groups so he's not over weight or anything and has very active play time like any other normal 2 year old (roudy at times) boy, but is there something I should be giving him that I'm missing? (I'm sorry this is such a novel, I just wanted to cover all the bases and questions you might have to possibly diagnose something).

Answer
 To be sure that is more sleep than average for his age but if that is his best schedule I suggest you stick to it as much as you can. He must be a very active boy and all the exercise causes him to need a little more sleep than average. You seem to think he has accepted the baby; don't count on it. Don't leave him alone with the baby. Under the guise of being helpful he may pick up the baby and drop or throw him/her down. If your husband brought home a 18 year old blonde and said she was going to stay it would take you a long time to adjust and you might scratch at her eyes every time he wasn't looking. Eventually this will change, of course, but a 2 year old doesn't see anything good about a new baby. Often children have to be nudged into maturity and drinking from a cup or glass is one of those steps. To bed with a bottle bathes his teeth in a sugar (lactose) containing liquid which is very damaging to his teeth. Keep reading a doing all the things that make him feel mature, things that baby can't do.