To bring in an hour's "grown up time" in the daytime?

[CruCru]

DS has pretty much dropped his daytime nap (he will be 3 in September). I also have an 8 month old DD who still has two naps - one at 1:30pm ish.

AIBU to say that from 1:30 to 2:30 it is grown up time and DS needs to play with his toys by himself then? I really need the break to chill and get small jobs done.

We did something similar. We introduced "quiet time" which I insisted had to be spent on your bed, being quiet (!) though looking at books and drawing or playing quietly was allowed. Sometimes DS would go to sleep, mostly he didn't, but I think the more restful period was good for him as well as me!

My dc3 is the same age and I doubt she would comply with that easily. She is quite able to play by herders but if I told her to do so for an hour then she would most likely want my attention and be upset!
An hour of tv is perfectly fine though if you need to get jobs done and you do other stuff the rest of the time!

We still have rest time for anyone who is at home after lunch and Ds1 is 6
He chooses to read unless he feels very tired when he naps.
4 year old ds2 alternates about 50/50 between sleeping or Lego (his choice)
Baby girl is still in training (for training read wishful thinking) at 4m old but we aim for a nap.

I would. I'm not at that stage yet but I'm hoping to be able to convince DD when she does drop her nap that she still needs to sit in her room and have some 'quiet time'. Possibly that may involve putting a DVD on the laptop and letting her watch it, but tbh most parents I know whose kids have dropped naps end up putting the telly on as young kids do still need some calm time during the day.

Is your ds doing nursery or pre school?

Nap time was always very important to me too, but at about the same time as mine dropped their nap, they were starting pre school, so I still got some time in the day to myself.

Whether you can do this or not depends entirely on your child. I think it would be quite harsh to tell a three year old that they aren't allowed to bother you at all for a whole hour. That's a long time when you're three. It may be that he's quite happy to amuse himself on which case everyone's a winner, but if he isn't then it would be mean to make him, and itcould cause more stress than it's worth trying to enforce it.

He is in preschool two mornings a week. To be honest, he isn't bad at amusing himself and when I have them both by myself, I make sure we do quite a big outing in the morning to tire them out.

YANBU but good luck with implementing it!

I did this wiith both mine when they dropped the nap just do it you dont have to entertain children from when they get up till bedtime

Haha hahaha good luck!

My ds got much better at entertaining himself as he got older. I didn't enforce anything, I let him join in with me or would play then nip off here and there to play.

Mine are 4&2 and I get chores done in little fits and spurts as opposed to ignoring them for an hour.

I found that because we went gradually from them not wanting to nap and singing or sneaking up to play in their rooms anyway they accepted it was a treat to be allowed to stay awake if they decided they didn't need a nap and we haven't had any arguments.
The 4 year old especially was very smug to graduate to rest time rather than naptime like his big brother when he turned 4 and its not at all unusual if its been a busy week for the 6 year old to ask to be tucked in "I might get up later but I will have a nap first" they both sleep fine at night. I have no idea if it is luck, personality or strategy as cant raise them again differently but there is no harm in trying if you think it would help you both to have some quiet time.

I can see your point OP but it just puts off the real issue which is that your children need to learn to play independently when you're busy anyway. I would do it gradually, get used to saying you're busy and get him to play alone. Otherwise he will see it as rejection and that will be very hard for him.

When dd was that age we didnt have sky telly bbc2 showed kids programmes at lunchtime was a godsend to me