Alternate title: Because you haven’t heard enough about sleep from me in the last three years.
There comes a time in every child’s life when they give up their nap. ?Mothers around the globe go into mourning at the loss of that precious little bit of free time they are allowed to do things such as go pee without little eyes peering at you or heaven forbid check their email in silence. ?For me, I spend that precious hour – hour and half working. ?As in doing stuff that makes this family just a wee bit of money. ?Without that nap time I have to get up every 5 minutes to attend to something. ?I can’t find it. ?I’m hungry. ?Wipe my butt. ?When I sit back down it takes another 5 minutes to figure out what I was doing and what program I was doing it with. ?Thus I never get anything done. ?Therefore I put sticky notes all over my computer screen telling me what I should be doing next. ?For instance one says GSA brochure. ?I take this to mean that I am supposed to create a brochure for our Gay Straight Alliance group at church. ?I think there is a deadline. ?The sticky didn’t tell me so… so meh. ?Oh look! ?Blogs!
Naps.
It has come to pass that my child only “requires” a nap every third day. ?I am of the personal belief that he needs a nap every day. ?Mostly out of selfish reasons, but in part because he can become quite the little crab come dinner time. ?Especially since he caught on to our attempts to constantly feed him. ?That was soon met with, “NO! ?No. more. food.”
Since he doesn’t nap he is constantly there asking if we can go to the pool, the park or somewhere outside. ?My answer to that is see that sticky note right there? ?It says I have to do this thing or else we don’t get to eat next week. ?And now you just made me forget when the deadline is for it.
My other issue is that I have told him that he doesn’t have to necessarily nap, but he does have to have a mandatory quiet time. ?If not he gets so wound up that we can’t get him down and he crashes so hard one of us gets seriously maimed. ?However, when I put him in his bed for said quiet time he spends the whole time rocking. ?I kind of breaks my heart that he’s in there rocking away. ?However, I can’t just put him in his room and say here, read this book. ?He’s like his mother and has the attention span of a gnat. ?He would look at the book for 10 minutes and want to play.
So here I sit between this rock and a hard place. ?And I still don’t remember when that deadline for the brochure is.
I noticed the day of his sleepover he had a hard time falling to sleep. Normally he’s out in minutes. He’s gonna be 5 and this is about the time they stop needing them.
Wiping tears for you!
He won’t play with his Tag pen, color, or even watch a movie on the small DVD player? Well when you have deadlines, just phone and I will come get him for the afternoon! It will make both our lives’ much easier, see you will have quiet and my kids will have another playmate (when you have more than two, its better the more kids you have over…they don’t irritate you as much!) Good luck! and call if you need me, it will be a long summer!
It was always a struggle to get my kids to take naps. It’s so necessary to have that little bit of quiet time for yourself during the day. The thing that saved me (and still does sometimes) was coloring books. Even Eamon, who has a short attention span, would sit and color for a good 30 minutes or more. We just made sure to print out coloring pages for things he was interested in (mostly Star Wars). Is there some quiet activity like that which would engage the boy’s interest?
In desperate times, I will sit the kids in front of a movie or some not-too-obnoxious TV show to get a bit of time to myself.