Printable View
Well I'm going to be in the dog house later when LO will be refusing to go to bed at 7pm :(. I have let LO have a nap today and I know LO's parents are not going to be happy with me but it was really hard to keep LO awake and it was making LO really miserable. The problem is that mum wants LO in bed by 7pm and gets fed up if that doesn't happen and I will get the blame for allowing the nap to happen!!
How old is LO?
You do know that we are actually not allowed to stop a LO from sleeping if they want to :thumbsup:
xxx
I had parent like that told me she didn't want here to go to sleep. How can you stop it.
As a parent i find it odd how some parents demand for us not to let their children sleep. I know not all children are the same but if my daughters didnt have a sleep during the day this is when I have the worst time getting them to sleep on a night.
Admittedly if they have a lateish nap then the time they go to bed may be delayed by 20 mins but we have a routine that works for us and my eldest daughter (3) doesnt always go straight to sleep as she may read a book but she knows its bed time.
My youngest daughter (14 months) will 90% of the time open the door ready to go upstairs at 7pm herself. We read a story and she lies in her cot and thats her for the night too. Sometimes she falls asleep before the story has finished, other nights she lies talking to her teddy Dumbo before falling asleep.
And as AliceK said as far as i am aware we cant stop children falling asleep if they're tired.
I completly understand where you're coming from as i believe children still need a day time sleep, my 5yr dd still sometimes has a sleep on a Sunday afternoon, however.... I can see mums point as well, my 2 have always woke through the night but always gone straight back off until this week where we are battling to get Alfie to sleep, not so much when he first goes down but when he wakes. I've tried everything and ended up having to sleep in the spare room with him which i don't want to get in the habit of doing. The last 3 days he's had a 1/2 to 1 hr sleep before 12 and nothing on the afternoon and he's slept through from 7-6 so i can sympathise with mum as well as you.
LO is 2.5 years and some days won't try to have a sleep which is great. But other days he just collapses and seems exhausted. I sympathise with mum that the days LO has a nap, he may be tricky to then get to bed but some days it is impossible to keep him going all day. And as you have rightly pointed out, we shouldn't stop them from sleeping anyway. But I do feel guilty when I allow naps knowing that parents have specifically requested for me not to :(
Ask the parent if she would like you to make child stand up all day - that way child can't go to sleep, can't see any other way of stopping her! Surely better that child sleeps for half an hour comfortably just after lunch, rather than nodding off on floor or sofa or in the middle of tea later in the day?
I once had a parent complain because her son kept banging his head, she didn't like it when I said that other than putting him in a safety helmet, there was little I could do other than strap him in a buggy all day.
That made me giggle :laughing:. It's true.....one day LO fell asleep on the floor! I felt so incredibly mean as he had been trying to nap all afternoon and I had tried to keep him going. That was my wake up call and I decided that I would never stop a LO from napping again. I just wish the parents would understand that sometimes we just can't stop these things from happening :panic:
What is it with some of these parents? I couldn't wait to spend time in the evening with my DS after I had come home, if he didn't go to bed till 8 so what, time is precious, you never know when that is going to be taken from you, one of mine complained as 11 month had 30 mins sleep the other day, and he didn't go to bed till 6.20, she only picks him up at 5, 30 mins drive home, has a play and straight to bed.
Teacake2
I hope my 20 month LO sleeps tonight. She fell asleep on the bus this morning for 30 mins, didn't go down again and was so ratty and obnoxious I put her in the buggy for a 30 min nap at 3.30 :rolleyes: There was no keeping her awake and I thought it would be worse if she fell asleep on the car trip home at 5.45.
Parents are not funny about it at all but I hope she sleeps tonight
If he doesn't try to go to sleep every day then it does sound like he is starting to outgrow naps. A lot of children phase out their naps naturally by just needing to sleep every other day, then every third day, once a week etc. At 2 and a half most children still nap most days. Explain to mum that this phase won't last forever and before she knows it he will have grown out of napping. Most can't cut it out completely and do still need 'quiet time' at some point in the day (usually after lunch). Sometimes they will fall asleep during quiet time and sometimes they wont, but in order for their little brains and bodies to function and develop, they do need rest and/or sleep.
Could you not compromise with mum that if lo is tired you put him down for a sleep straight after lunch - that's much better thn trying to keep lo going and then have them fall asleep at tea time.
Miffy xx
mum needs to understand that it is far better for him to have an early nap (awake again before half two) than it is to fall asleep at 4 or 5pm - that is when it's hard to get them to bed :panic::panic:
If a lo needs to sleep, then they need to sleep. If mum is telling you not to allow that, then she's pretty much telling you to neglect/deny the lo a basic physical need.
What sort of intervention/technique does she propose you use to enforce this sleep denial?
I know some parents get anxious about bedtimes, and I've seen plenty who create the opposite problem by regularly letting children stay up too late. But what's the fixation with 7pm? Is it for the lo's benefit or the parents' convenience? :(