8 Reasons Your Toddler Wakes Up Cranky from Naps

Toddlers are known to throw tantrums, but that doesn’t mean your child has to wake up grumpy from every nap. Let’s dig into 8 common reasons your toddler wakes up cranky from naps and how to fix it.

I didn’t realize it was possible for kids to wake up happy from a nap. My son had been waking up crying from naps for as long as I could remember, so I assumed every kid did the same.

But then I met another mom at a play date who shared how her toddler would wake up smiling and happy after naps. Startled by this realization, I then wondered if I was doing something wrong that could be contributing to my son’s bad moods.

And most importantly, I wanted to know why. Why did he wake up cranky all the time when other kids could wake up just fine?

It turns out, there are a few reasons kids wake up cranky from naps. Once you can pinpoint the reason, addressing the problem becomes clearer, getting you closer to happier wake-ups. Take a look at why your child may be waking up cranky:

Table of Contents

1. Lack of communication skills

We forget that toddlers still lack the communication skills you and I have. Some are obvious: the child with a handful of words can only communicate basic needs. But even those with plenty of words still can’t express themselves as well as we sometimes expect them to.

Even if your child understands everyday language, he still may not know the nuances of expressing which words for which emotions. For instance, he isn’t exactly going to say, “I’m grouchy right now because I woke up halfway through the nap and wanted to keep sleeping.”

And so, kids are more likely to express themselves in ways they’ve done since birth: through crying. They’re not developmentally ready to communicate in mature ways just yet.

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2. Feeling out of sorts from waking up

Think about the last few naps you’ve taken. If you’re like me, you woke up disoriented, wondering what time it was. The nap may have been too short to feel refreshing or too long that you’re in a sleepy stupor. You wave away anyone who tries to talk to you, and you need a few minutes to lie down in bed, waiting to feel more awake than you are.

The same happens to your toddler. We can all feel cranky after waking up from a nap. As restful and necessary as naps are for kids, they’re not always the easiest to wake up from. He may feel just as out of sorts as you and I get.

He may also be waking up from a bad dream and struggling with piecing reality together from such an experience. For anyone who has had a strange, surreal, or frightening dream, waking up can feel overwhelming.

3. A bad mood before waking up

Do you struggle with getting your toddler to nap without a fuss in the first place? Is he overtired from a morning full of activities?

What happens before a nap can affect how he wakes up from it. As much as we hope a nap can erase the tantrums and frustrations he may have had, often it’s only a “pause” before he feels upset once again.

Combine that with the groggy feeling we just talked about, and it’s no wonder a bad morning can lead to worse tempers after
a nap.

4. Your toddler mirrors your mood

How you feel when you get your toddler up from a nap can affect his mood. For instance, do you lose your temper because he woke up cranky? You may have been patient the first few times, but when every nap is a hassle, you’re more likely to become impatient or lose your cool.

If it’s not losing your temper, maybe you feel stressed at the sound of him crying. We all feel that tug when we hear our kids cry and we’re driven to end the tears quickly. So, you walk into the room to stop him from crying, as if you’re “saving” him from a terrible disaster that doesn’t exist.

I’ve done both, and I’ve realized how much my own mood can affect my son. As understandable as it was to lose my temper, doing so only reflected back on him. His mood got worse, which only further dampened mine, and we’d end up in a cycle that was difficult to break. After all, it’s unfair to expect our kids to “snap out of it” when we’re just as frustrated.

It’s the same with stress. The more stressed you feel, the more likely your child will feel just as stressed and find it difficult to calm down. While stress and anger may not cause him to wake up grumpy, it can make the wake-up process harder to calm down from.

5. Difficulty coping with emotions

Like communicating, your toddler is still learning how to cope with emotions. Kids aren’t born with the ability to recognize or understand feelings. Some even think they’re the only ones who feel this way or wonder if there’s anything wrong with them. They don’t know if this terrible feeling will ever go away, and if so, how to make that happen.

Through his early childhood years, he’ll learn to manage his emotions so he understands what they are. He’ll learn what they’re called and that it’s better to acknowledge them than to fight them off. He’ll cope and find ways to make these emotions feel less overwhelming, such as holding a comfort item, using words, or finding a space to be by himself.

All these lessons don’t happen overnight, much less in the span of a few weeks. It takes years of coaching, modeling, and comforting on your part, and practice and developmental growth on his.

That only means that these next few years aren’t always the easiest for parents. It can be frustrating when we’ve talked about emotions and modeled the calm way to respond for what feels like forever that we expect them to grow out of these tantrums by now.

It doesn’t work that way, though. Think of it more as a mountain chart that goes up and down. There’ll be many ups and downs over your child’s early years, but the general trend is headed in the direction you’d expect and hope.

Emotions aren’t only about anger, either: he may be going through developmental stages normal for his age. For instance, being away from you—even for a brief period of the day—can send panic to any child struggling with separation anxiety. Or he can develop object permanence and a fear of the dark that can go along with it. Even if he had been fine all this time, his age and stage can introduce new and confusing behavior you may not have been expecting.

6. The inability to go back to sleep

We all wake up throughout sleep. You and I know how to put ourselves back to sleep when this happens—we hug a pillow, find a new comfortable position, and clear our minds.

But kids can have a difficult time putting themselves back to sleep, especially if they’ve had no opportunity to do so. Maybe your child has relied on motion like rocking, a stroller walk, or a car ride to fall asleep. Or he sleeps better with you nearby and is lost and inconsolable when he wakes up without you.

Without self-soothing skills, he wakes up in the middle of a nap feeling grumpy because he wants to keep sleeping and is upset that he doesn’t know how.

7. A lack of routine

Routines benefit kids in so many ways, including providing a predictable structure to their day. How does this affect naps?

Without a routine, your child can’t focus on learning and relaxing because he’s too anxious or worried about what new thing might happen today. Rather than expecting naps at a predictable time or sequence, he finds his day erratic, not knowing when and where he’ll go to sleep.

A consistent routine lets him know that naps happen after certain parts of the day. Triggers like reading a book and making the room dark signal that it’s time to sleep. He has less to resist and more familiarity to expect and rely on.

8. Temperament

I’ve found that some kids tend to like naps more than others. Just as some of us love sleeping in long stretches and taking midday naps, others are ready to go with only five or six hours of sleep.

A child wired to not care much for naps is more likely to resist them than another who enjoys sleeping in long stretches.

I admit we’re all born with certain traits, some that are difficult to work with. But our temperaments don’t define us—or our kids. Imagine labeling a child “difficult” for the rest of his life because of his temperament without finding solutions to work with and around it.

Instead, we can do plenty. First, accept and acknowledge your child’s temperament—this will help you become more empathetic to his behavior and the challenges he faces. Then, find ways not to erase or wish his traits away, but to work with them. Your child may not take three-hour stretches of naps, but you can still help him take longer naps than usual and wake up happier from them.

The bottom line

From needing more sleep to a lack of routine, kids have many reasons for waking up grumpy. Hopefully, you can pinpoint what could be driving your toddler to wake up cranky from a nap—and more importantly, the steps you can take to turn things around.

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