The past few weeks Ben started acting strangely. So strange, in fact that we took him to the doctor twice in two weeks to see what was wrong with him.

We knew he was teething. We also knew he had a cold. And we were transitioning him from crib to bunk bed. So, a lot of change.

But we still didn’t understand why our happy, always smiling, easy going little Ben was all of a sudden throwing temper tantrums for hours every day.

He cried when he went down for his nap. He cried when he woke up. At night he would cry or stay up for hours messing about in his bed.

Finally my father, who was visiting for a couple days, did some internet sleuthing. He found comments from other parents on different websites. One parent tried dropping the nap and found the tantrums went away.

Drop the nap? But his brother, who is twice his age still naps most days. How could he be ready to drop the nap at 2 and 1/2 years old?

I tried an experiment today. Is he really not tired at nap time or just scared in his new bed? I put a movie on and laid him on the couch. Guess what – no nap! Third day in a row! And surprisingly he barely suffered in the afternoon. Even better – no crying after I left him in his bed tonight.

Too early to be a trend, but promising…