No More Naps

Hannah no longer naps. This has been a difficult and long transition for me as I cherished those couple of hours every afternoon that I could have to myself

and really didn't want to give them up.

It's taken me a long time to face up to the fact that Hannah has been making the transition from sleeping every afternoon to no longer needing a nap. I still feel like she would be a lot more cheerful in the evenings if she had slept in the afternoon--but you can't force a child to sleep. And believe me I've tried to create as soothing of an environment as possible so as to invite sleep, I've offered rewards, I've let her sleep with me, given back rubs for minutes on end . . . . . and when all that failed tried the wonderful parenting techniques of yelling and pleading and engaging in no-win power struggles with my daughter that inevitably ended with both of us in tears and furious and no where near feeling sleepy. After probably about four months of this cycle of a couple weeks with good naps then a couple with hard won naps, then a week with no naps, then good naps, etc. with the napping weeks getting fewer and farther between and the power struggles getting more frequent and heated, I have finally given up on naps. In the end this has been such a relief.

Now, Hannah has an hour and a half rest every day. Instead of me wondering if I'm going to get a rest because I don't know if she will sleep or not, I can rely on this quiet time during the day. Also, since she is not sleeping the timing of her rest is flexible so I can easily time it with Elanor's afternoon nap. During her rest Hannah sits on her bean bag with her night light on, and listens to audio books or some music. I let her pick some books to look at and a few quiet toys like her magna-doodle, baby dolls, or puzzles. She has learned to stay on her bean bag unless she needs to go potty. Then she can use the bathroom and go right back to her bean bag. Now that this is routine she complies very well and we have such a peaceful rest time! Plus, I put her to bed about an hour earlier at night, which (if only Elanor would stay asleep) that means Shawn and I have a little more time to ourselves in the evening. So, now that the dreaded "no more naps" transition has been made it is really working out quite nicely for all of us.

The other day Hannah informed me that during her rest time she was going to pretend to be Spot the dog and hide in her basket and she wanted me to "look" for her when I came back. (Spot hides in a basket in one of her videos.) So, when rest time was over, I came into her room saying "Spot! Where are you Spot?" only to be greeted by the well known soft snores of her fast asleep-- wedged inside her basket of doll things! I quietly walked out a little confused about whether or not to remove the basket, but deciding to just leave it so as not to wake her up. It was good to know that if she did really need it-- she would fall asleep all by herself even in what must have been the most uncomfortable of positions! She woke up refreshed about a half hour later.

Hannah in a Basket: