Sleeping at nursery

[Nibblering]

We have a few parents at our setting who don't want their child to sleep as it impacts their sleep at home. Some of the children manage fine but others are clearly exhausted and are getting upset. Obviously if they fall asleep, we make sure they are moved to a bed but having always working in partnership with parents and followed their routines, I'm beginning to feel cruel for not facilitating a nap when some children are clearly really shattered.

Is there a middle ground to be found here? I don't want to spoil bed time routines because that would also impact the child but equally, seeing them get so tired that they start crying doesn't seem a reasonable solution either.

Very selfish of the parents. If a child is tired they need to sleep. And not fair to expect nursery staff to deal with a whinging tired child just so they can have a child free evening.

It’s a tough one. My DS gets into a cycle of having a long nap at nursery and then going to bed late, then he’s tired the next day which then means he has a long nap and nursery and so it continues! We’re managing it by saying that the amount of sleep he has isn’t the issue but please ensure he is awake by 2pm - so some
days that might be two hours sleep at lunch (he’s 2.5) but the awake window between then and his bedtime means he sleeps by 8-8.30pm. Sometimes the transition is hard. I’d expect nursery to follow my routine but to let me know if they think that it is impacting DS and if he needs more sleep.

Not new but haven't come across children who have been so clearly affected by a lack of sleep!

I am the manager and have always been happy to follow the parents wishes - I wouldn't have appreciated my child sleeping for hours on end either! - but this doesn't seem the best way forward for the child. There are 2 in particular who are struggling, one 2 and one 3.

Having done some reading around, it seems some settings don't wake their children up at all as they think that if a child is sleeping, they need the sleep, but as I said, I think there's a happy middle way - I just need to find it!

We usually ask the parents can we put them down early and we'll wake them after 30/45 mins or whatever amount the parents agree to. Most parents are fine with this.

It's cruel keeping them awake when they are so tired. Have a chat with the parents and just explain that their child is miserable and needs a sleep, could they just have a short power nap to get them through the afternoon.

I agree with this. I think mostly if you discuss with parents most will be reasonable.

My 2yo DS is dropping his nap at the moment but some days he really needs a sleep. If he won't sleep at a reasonable time I'll let him have 15-30 minutes later in the day but no more than that. He's not always happy to wake up so I try and wake him up with the promise of a snack which normally gets him moving. He does go to bed later on days he's had a nap but it's a small difference I find and I just adjust my expectations of when bedtime is going to be.

When the worked in a nursery we would negotiate a shorter nap with the parents. Eg.. sleep time at midday and wake them at 12:45. Some kids literally cannot go from 8-5 (sometimes 6pm) without a nap! If parents were insistent on no nap we would do our best, but still sometimes the child would literally fall asleep. At that point I would let them have 20 or 30 minutes, then explain to the parent at pick up time. I was always polite but firm that the child’s needs come first.

It’s because we’ve had chats with the parents and they don’t want their DC to nap at all that I’m asking - usually, we’ve managed to find a way that works for everyone.

The child has increased to full time so it’s more noticeable and having a bigger impact too. I will speak to the parents but I suppose I just wanted to canvas for opinions to gauge whether it was reasonable to say we couldn’t stop their child from sleeping if they were really tired even if they didn’t agree to it

Definitely a tricky one! I know children are so different at nursery sometimes, so perhaps just mentioning how they're not coping will give the parents time to try something new.

For example, my daughter is 2.5. She dropped her nap just after her 2nd birthday. She dropped it at nursery first but we'll pretend that wasn't the case!

If she sleeps for half an hour in the day at home now, she'll go to bed 3-4 hours later than normal. Which means she loses a LOT of night sleep for a small nap and ends up cranky and overtired. Usually meaning she won't nap the next day (kid logic!)

But if she had dropped her nap at home I'd obviously let nursery know this. But if nursery then approached me to say she was really struggling and needed the rest, my first thought would be how different kids are at nursery and how busy they are there and I'd try a short nap at nursery at their discretion. The last thing I'd want is my child struggling with the long days there without some rest.
Even if at home she couldn't nap without massively impacting her overall sleep.

It's just about open discussion. I know when my DD has started something, initially I'd assume she'd be the same at nursery. But the last year and a half has taught me otherwise so now I totally accept that they may need to approach something different to make it work for them.

For us it was the opposite. They couldn't get her to nap there at all. So I told them that was fine and carried on with our own routine at home until they eventually matched up! Same with potty training. What happens at home is very different to nursery.

Just have good and open communication with parents and explain what you're seeing because we all know what you see isn't the same as what we see.

I trust our nursery and if they said a routine wasn't working I would believe them and happily try something else.

Dropping a nap at the same time as upping hours is surely a bad idea, I'd suggest a short nap to them for a few weeks while he settles.

DD took months to drop her last nap, it was painful and in retrospect we should've just sucked up a few weeks of crankiness and gone cold turkey.