to have said no naps for 2 year old ds (mil related, and long)

[justbatteringon]

DS turned two in April. If he has a nap during the day is up until at least midnight, about a month and a half ago DP and I agreed to try no naps for a week to see if it helped any. It did DS's mood improved he was sleeping from 7.30 - 8pm until 6 - 7am the next morning (his usual wake up times). I admit some days he has a tired period but usually if you distract him/keep him busy he'll have no problem staying up.

At the minute DP's parents take care of the children while DP and I are working, controversial to MNers I know but it's very temporary and it's a long story but please believe me when I say I have legitimate reasons and I appreciate them doing it very much.

So DP's parents watch them at the most about 5 hours a day maybe 3 times a week. We asked them to please not let DS nap, because of above reasons DP was insistent to them that they not nap I took the approach with them that I understood that he's sometimes hard work to keep but up but if you've tried and he's knackered then let him have a wee sleep. No problem or so I thought.

They've since told DP that they will not make any attempt to keep him up and if DS wants to sleep they're going to let him and that is that. They even lied about letting him nap which made us think he would be much more tired than he was and took him to bed much earlier than we would of had we known he'd had a sleep during the day. This happened 2 days in a row and it's not even the problem.

DP sent them a whatsapp picture of DS at midnight saying "this is what i mean about letting him sleep he's still up and it's after midnight i know my boy and i know when he needs his sleep"

FIL replied that he was absolutely livid at DP for sending him that message and MIL sent DP 3 messages about how terrible he was how none of her other children were as terrible and was he proud of himself that his DF was now going to bed with high blood pressure. I told DP to ask them over for coffee the next day to sort this out. MIL responded that DP must have a guilty conscience to invite them for coffee.

I thought that the response was absolutely awful and want to have a word with them to clear the air and remind them that we are the parents and not them.

Would I be wrong to do that?

Does anyone else not allow their 2 year old to nap?

Thanks for reading.

Your DH needs to apologise. To say I'm so sorry - that was a shitty thing I did. I was incredibly tired and frustrated but that's no excuse.
Equally if you've not experienced the soul sapping nightmare of a child who doesn't need that much sleep it's easy to be complacent about the effects that mucking up the routine have on the parents.
So shouting and telling them what to do and blaming them isn't going to cut any ice. Try a new tactic - what if you tell them how desperate you are. Cry. This sleep thing (and the other SEN symptoms your son is showing) is starting to break you.
It won't last. You might be in it for the long haul but the sleep issues will sort themselves out providing you keep doing the marvellous job you are doing. What worked for us was to put a 3/4 bed in DS's room and just go to bed early with him. Laying next to him and letting him hear slow gentle breathing (even if angst ridden inside) worked a treat. You'll be scoffed at but it's worth it not to be so knackered.
Don't give up your job. You are sleep deprived and not in a good place to make decisions right now. If you have enough spare cash hire a temp nanny for a few weeks. And get your new child on a nursery waiting list pronto!
Absolutely ignore anyone who says your parenting is crap - but don't ignore how rude you guys were. Make sure he apologises without any blame or sulky "it was your fault you made me do it" attitude

YANBU, Op. My DS (2.10) is up until midnight if he gets even 15 minutes nap in the day, shrieking wildly and running around throwing stuff gleefully. It's AWFUL. He has been like this since about 2 years old.

I get that it can be difficult keeping a tired, grumpy toddler awake when the flag in the afternoon. Usually my DS is fine but sometimes he almost falls asleep in the car, or playing trains on the floor. But I have to be vigilant and keep him awake if need be, and we do something quiet that holds his interest instead. Even just insisting he has a cold drink or a snack will revive him for a bit then he forgets he was feeling sleepy.

Nursery are happy to accommodate this, as they get the benefit the next morning! If DS has been awake until 1am, he is not chirpy and happy at 8am the next day, when I've had to drag him out of bed to take him there. He's mostly angelic behaviour wise, except when tired. Then it's like he is possessed by a demon - we can tell every time!

Your PIL need to listen to you. At least you have professional childcare lined up, but the way they've spoken to you in awful and I couldn't put up with that.

OP I wouldn't apologise if I were you.

The responses so far have focused on the perils of free family childcare and how much sleep a 2 year old needs (i'm with you by the way - DS stopped napping completely before 2 yrs). But regardless of the details, your in-laws LIED to you. About your CHILD.

That's very worrying

If my DSD sent me your dh's picture message at midnight after I had looked after DGS for her she would be finding alternative childcare for the following day. They are doing you a huge favour. If you are not happy take A/L or parental leave until your new childcare kicks in.

How long did he nap for, when he used to have a nap until April?

A one hour nap offsetting evening bedtime by 4 hours in a 2yo is odd to me.

It sounds like this thread has actually been really useful for you OP which I'm glad about.

Just wanted to say I do understand, like a pp I have the opposite problem in that my DM won't let DS sleep and he comes home exhausted and ratty and his night sleep is usually worse than if he'd slept because bedtime becomes an hysterical screamathon. Occasionally I try and tackle it politely but it always ends up with me feeling sick and guilty and her feeling angry. So I have to just accept it.

Like that pp MIL is the complete opposite and when she looks after DS she is very keen to do things 100% as we want them, they hit the nail on the head about the difference being that MIL sees us as adults but DM still thinks of me & my siblings as children.

MN often treats the GP childcare issue very harshly. Certainly in my case this is not a decision made in a vacuum and the key thing for me is that DS adores my mum and vice versa. He talks about her every day and she gets so excited about spending time with him. So ultimately I have to keep reminding myself of that. I still wish she would talk to me like an adult more often but it really does come down to that love and relationship between them which isn't replicable anywhere else - sleep or not.

my DD slept for 35 mins yesterday. she didn't go to sleep until 5 to 11 last night. some children are like that it's not really that hard to believe (especially when this is the second child you have that's done this)

YANBU-ish. However I don't blame them for being angry at the photo. I can understand that it was done in temper and frustration, but it was a childish and petty thing to do.

If you live in England op and send your child to nursery he will be allowed to sleep if he shows signs of being tired. He will be allowed to sleep even if you request he not. Nurseries keeping up children and not allowing sleep have been reported to Ofsted before.

Childcare is regulated by Ofsted and as a childminder I couldn't possibly tell them that I keep children awake when they are tired even if parents request it. It's seen as bad practise.

I get your problem I really do.

However I can't belive your dh is so rude and ungrateful that he sent those pictures. You be very careful they don't refuse to help you out at all for babysitting in the future. He should apologise. They were helping you out. Awful behaviour.

My DD is three and is similar in that if she naps during the day then she won't sleep until late at night and then is knackered the next day. She does get tired and grumpy in the afternoon but I do my best to keep her going and she goes down at 7pm and sleeps until 7am. Bliss! My son was very different, he gave up naps at 18 months and has always been a bit of a night owl.

I really don't think it's such a big deal to ask them not to let him nap. It's just better for the child sometimes and I do understand your husband's frustration with that photo. It sounds like you only have two more weeks to go so just try to get through them as best as you can.

My parents took care of my 3 year old for a few weeks and they found it very hard work so I'd probably just apologise and let it slide with the in-laws. Hopefully things will work better with the childminder.

Op as I said I am a cm and have a similar mindee. It's extremely difficult as the others need a nap as if they don't they fall asleep straight after pick up at 5 and of course are them awake until stupid o'clock.

The cm will try and accommodate all the children but beware of the danger of falling asleep in the car on the pm school run.

My only worry here is that a child like this is not learning how to self settle or lie quietly as they are so knackered they just basically collapse with sleep in the bed. So when they have a nap they don't get the discipline of being told it's bed time. Stay in your bed and look at books or play quietly. By 2 in the absence of any special needs, a child should be understanding this and doing as they are told.

YANBU

I have a similar situation with my slightly younger DS, 15 months.

My MIL looks after him every other Friday while I work. He's been on one nap for a good couple of months now because if he sleeps past 3pm he's a nightmare to get to bed and if he has a morning nap he wakes at the crack of dawn so yes, sometimes it is somewhat of an effort to cajole him to lunch time before he has a nap but I do it 4 days a week and I manage fine but lo and behold once a fortnight I come home from work to find he's had two naps because MIL insists she couldn't keep him awake past 10:30am and then she had to struggle to get him to nap again at 4pm. It's only once a fortnight so I try not to let it bother me but it is irritating. Sometimes I'd rather he just went to nursery an extra day a week but then he'd never see his grandparents.

I agree you were very rude to your pil. It seems to me that 'dp then sits in his room with him until he goes to sleep' is the root of your problem here. Sounds like everybody gets very wound up about getting him off to bed and of course then he won't go down. Him being non verbal doesn't seem a concern to me at this age having parented a child who was nearly 3 before she started speaking in coherent sentences. Naps are not the problem here and actually if anything are likely to help his communication and receptiveness to learning during the day. The problem is your bedtime routine and the expectations you've set for him. He only goes down on the non nap days because he's so exhausted he can't keep awake. That's not how he should be.

I completely understand why your DH sent the picture too. My MIL just thinks I'm being "strict" when I explain about his nap/routine and so she routinely just ignores me and does it her way. Maybe if I sent her a picture of DS romping around at 10pm she would understand rather than thinking I'm slavishly sticking to a routine just for the sake of it.

Also my DS's nursery do not put him down for a sleep before midday as per my instructions even if he is tired before. He's 15 months not a newborn, he can't just sleep whenever he likes now.

Dd had stopped naps by 2. And yes, a short nap on the day after that would massively affect her night time sleep.

And yes, just like on here, there were people who didn't want to believe it or felt that only their own way of doing things with their child was the only correct way of managing a child.

Dd went to nursery. They were more than happy for dd not to
Have a nap. They'd do a quiet activity with her instead whilst some of the others slept.

And contrary to what some posters believe: not all toddlers are the se!

The message your DP sent was a bit passive aggressive but their reaction and their TOTAL refusal to enforce your routine is way OTT.

Your FIL suffered high blood pressure as a result??

Good God, some people are so precious aren't they?

YANBU

Along with speech thertherapy he's on the waiting list for the ear specialist.

We've tried the whole sleep training thing It was just a week of us putting him into bed and him getting out again we were exhausted before he was.
This is a big part of why dp is the one that puts him down at night he runs rings around me.

Our dd at 10 months isn't a big sleeper might have a cat nap or 2 but other than that is up all day. But sleeps all night this isn't forced by any of us just the way she is. But is apparently ok in the gp's eyes.

Funnily enough, DD2 was a bit of a nightmare when it came to sleep (at times) but I found she slept worse at night when she hadn't had a nap in the day. But the key thing, it was just a catnap in the day - ten or 15 minutes. She woke up all nice and refreshed then went to bed a normal time. Think she got overtired if she had no nap and that just made her sleep at night not as restful.

Sending the photo was VU. If someone had done that to me I would tell them the childcare is over from that point. I actually had my mouth open in shock as I was reading about that - just unbelievable.

And like others have mentioned it may be difficult trying to get nursery to play along with your No Nap rule.

However you do have my sympathies about a child who is up all night - it's unbearable.

I hope you manage to sort out your disagreement.

My DS is the same age as yours so if it helps to compare routines...He was a nightmare sleeper until about 5 months (up every 2 hours for a breast feed) and then we sleep trained and put him in his own room - we used the Good Night, Sleep Tight book. He learned to self settle at this stage

Until he was about 9 months he had morning and afternoon naps (9.30-10.30 and 2.30-4) - this was his own routine rather than one we forced. He went to bed at 7pm

He went down to 1 nap (12-1.30 at nursery, longer at home) from about 9 months. This was the nursery routine and seemed to work for him but there were some hellish weeks of no naps at nursery which led to rage at bedtime. Solved by letting him sleep in his pushchair for a bit.

His current routine is up at 6.45/7am, breakfast about 7.30/7.45, lunch at 11.30, nap 12-2, dinner 4.30, upstairs for bath/wash, teeth, pyjamas, and stories and into bed by 7.30pm. We normally look in on him when we go to bed but it's rare to hear a peep from him between bedtime and wakeup. He's gone through a patch of ungodly early wakeups so we've installed a gro clock.

He's just had his progress check at nursery and with the HV and no problems at all. He's very chatty, understands instructions and I can leave him for a few minutes whilst I take laundry upstairs or go to the loo and know he's safe.

If you have concerns about his development, or specifically about his sleep, you can contact the HV and request a review rather than wait until the progress check which can be really late in some areas.

The Good Night Sleep Tight book is really good and explains about sleep at different ages and stages of development so might help you work out what's happening.

I don't underunderstand why people are so shocked at the picture this is usually how we communicate with a picture of the child and a small tag line underneath.

I think he was just trying to get our point across his dm has been making a few snide remarks about how cruel we are to keep him up how she had to go through it with her own but to be honest after hearing stories and from what I've seen her parenting skills leave much to be desired.

And just to add it's not the fact she refuses to keep him up that's the issue it's the sweary, downright awful text message she sent him and all the snidey comments she makes about it.
I honestly wish I had the texts to show how cruel they were.
The fact she told dp that she wasn't even going to try to follow our wishes and this was before dp sent the message.

We're going theirs for dinner today I'm going to tell her dp is sorry for sending the picture message but at the end of the day these are our children our rules and I've decided I am going to put my foot down about the no naps rule.
Even with our future childminder.

Sorry OP - I made reference to a nursery but have since realised you are using a CM.

I use a CM for my 14m/o DS and at home he has two naps a day, 90 minutes in the morning and another 90 minute in the afternoon. I really wanted to continue this with the CM but it's just impossible because I can't expect the CM to make sure she and the other children are always in the home to accommodate my DS's nap times. Sometimes I would pick him up and she'd tell me he hadn't napped at all and he would look exhausted but other days she'd tell me that he'd napped 2.5 hours after lunch.

His sleep or lack of at the CM's used to really stress me out but I had to find a way to accept it because she had 5 other children to consider, not just mine.

Obviously this is the opposite problem to you as you don't want your child napping, I guess I'm just trying to say that in childcare arrangements where there are other children in the equation it's not always easy to adhere to every parent's wishes.

As had been said, if the CM is taking the children somewhere in the pushchair or the car she can't really control whether your son falls asleep or not.

Like I said, you have my sympathies. As someone who once used a sleep specialist because of the absolute nightmare my DS was surrounding his sleep, I know how important routines are and how even the thought of slight deviations taking place can cause fret and worry.

It may be helpful though to try and prepare yourself for the possibility that whilst he's with the CM he may be napping at times and there's nothing that can be done about that.

"But at the end of the day these are our children and our rules I'm going to put my foot down!"

You can't have this attitude to people who are providing FREE childcare. I'm honestly shocked you think it's ok to act so rudely to people who are doing you a huge favour!

I can't see dinner ending well.....

Seriously what is this emphasis on FREE childcare do you think dp and i don't help them with aspects of their lives? Such as gardening diy and such we don't ask them for payment and they expect us to carry out their requests to the letter.