To be really annoyed with nursery over this

[notaminorthing]

My two year old has mostly phased her nap out at home but still naps at nursery. This does mean a later bedtime but as long as she’s awake by 2. I’ve specifically asked before if she can be woken by 2.

However they keep not doing it and today she slept from 115 to twenty past three. It’s going to be around half nine by the time I get her down tonight. I have a reception aged child who I won’t be able to do homework or reading or anything with and even he is going to end up in bed later than ideal.

I have just stopped myself sending a really stroppy email and I’m going to ring in tomorrow but am I really being unreasonable in feeling a bit like I’ve lost trust? I’ve specifically asked and surely common sense should dictate that’s far too late a nap!

YABU. You have five other nights to do homework when your two year old goes to bed early, that is A LOT for a reception child in their first term.

I get that it’s annoying but surely not the end of the world twice a week. Maybe because she doesn’t nap at home anymore she makes up for it on nursery days? She clearly needs it to sleep that long with all the distractions and noise of nursery.

I must be being slow here as I’ve no idea what being a teacher has to do with it. I’m also a teacher. You clearly could do homework with one child with the other crashing around; I can’t. Ds would just be looking at DD and laughing and they would wind one another up. Far better to have proper quality time with them both before bed - which is manageable when one isn’t sleeping for over two hours in mid afternoon! Just don’t take over my thread with spiteful comments, is all I ask - it isn’t very nice to read and serves no purpose other than to have bad feeling.

I feel your pain OP.....we had a similar issue with our little girl after she had been at the childminders (she was apparently really tired there, way after she dropped her naps all the other days) but the others slept too even some rising school age, so not sure if it was a kind of routine she got them into and relished abit of time to herself!
I never challenged it too much because I didn't want her to not let DD nap if she genuinely needed it, but it was annoying!
Also because they went out she would often nap in the car!
We had lots of 9-10pm bedtimes at age 2/3.
In your situation though, I think they are definitely being unreasonable as they could have given her a shorter or an earlier nap.

Tbh tho op, you won't win this one.

Nurseries structures & staffing are based around all the ones in the tweenie/toddler rooms sleeping for pretty much 2 hours after lunch daily and they won't ever want to wake them, as kids are always cranky when woken. If you push it they will likely just lie & say they woke her when they didn't and its impossible to prove. My sister pulled her daughter from a nursery when she got old enough to talk and told her they were wrapping (swaddling) her (age almost 3!!) to try and force her to nap. Because they wanted all the kids asleep at the same time.

It happened with ours, and she would be given a chance to nap during the day, would take it up, they wouldn't wake her so it would go 2-3 hours and then she would be awake until 10-11pm at night, and to top it off when she was overtired would have night terrors. It took so many meetings and conversations before they took our requests seriously, but then still allowed it sometimes. It was fresh hell (from someone that uses 8-11pm to clean, cook, work and sometimes even read).

Ring the nursery each day at 2pm to wake her. They will soon get the message as it will be a pain you calling

It really isn't that big of a deal, a polite conversation reminding them to please wake her or your bedtime becomes very late should suffice. These things happen (it's happened with my LO) - it really isn't that bad. I think you're massively over reacting.

Mine is similar, a change in routine throws bedtime out of the window. Thankfully my nursery has been getting him up at 2 as requested. If I see a weird late nap now I would expect to find he’s not well, and they made a judgment call he needed it, which is of course fine. I think I’d expect to hear that though when picking up.

Perhaps as they have agreed to this already, you could start with asking them what happened with that nap (I.e. why?!!) and reiterate the capping request. I actually think telling them a late nap ends up with a 9/10pm bedtime should be sufficient reasoning, it certainly demonstrates that the long nap is against the child’s best interests.

That's an extremely dangerous nursery, dear god, swaddling a 3 year old should get them shut down.

Also, read to your kids together. Get the older one to read to you and the youngest. I have a 2yo and a 5yo and they go to bed at the same time so we all do reading all together. Spellings get done after dinner while we’re still at table so 2 year old can’t wreck them and just carries on eating. But even in year one it’s just spellings three times a week and doing the phonics book a couple of times, genuinely don’t understand what homework a reception kid is getting that needs doing every single evening.

I can’t do my 5 yo homework with our 2 yo around. Yanbu!! 2 yo interrupts every couple of seconds

Ah sorry if I’ve messed up the comments/quotes my bad.

but I think in general - if the OP has asked nursery to stick to a routine and they’ve gone an hour and 20 mins over…..that’s not great! Some kids aren’t affected but hers are. Mine were too which is why I can feel her pain.

I will ‘win’ it one way or the other because ultimately the whole point of the nursery’s existence is to provide childcare for working parents: either they can provide childcare which suits me, in which case great, or they can’t, in which case I’ll have to withdraw DD. I really, really can’t have regular evenings like this one!

I know that they always used to have the children go down for naps around midday and woken up around two. I think what’s been happening with DD is she isn’t napping at midday because she doesn’t need it, so they keep trying and keep trying, eventually she does go to sleep but it’s approaching half one by that point so rather than just let her have half an hour she stays asleep well into the afternoon. It would be so much better if they just didn’t try to get her to sleep!

I don’t think this is all nurseries! Mine have been really good at following our routine and have reduced the nap when I’ve requested. I have no reason to think they lie - occasionally the nap has gone on longer than requested by mistake and they have always been upfront. A few weeks back he had been off sick for a for a few days and they called me to say he was struggling to wake up and asked if I would I mind him sleeping longer as they didn’t want to upset him.

I feel we would get on well! 😂

Seriously, I really do appreciate replies like this which make me realise I’m normal, my children are normal and especially my two year old for not just sitting quietly in front of In The Night Garden while I do phonics with DS!

@notaminorthing that’s not you winning though, they won’t care if you leave, plenty more kids to take the spot

They probably have a waiting list. I worked five days a week when my DC were at nursery and didn’t have the slightest idea of whether they napped in the day or not.

urgh you lot don’t know your privilege 😁

my nephew napped like three hours a day until he was about 4 and still went to bed at 7 (took. himself. to bed.) and slept through. Mine were done with naps before 18 months.

Nephew is now 12 and still conks out before 9pm on a school night. My girls loathe sleep and are often found fannying around in their bedrooms until gone 11.

Privilege.

Oh good! I’m glad you managed to read my reply among everyone’s. You are really really not alone. Ideally I want my 2 yo out the house for phonics work and that’s why we’ve only done it 3 times since September basically. Luckily we did 3 nice long sessions but a little every day is impossible for me. I have a 5 yo 2 yo and 6 month. The 6 month is a dream. The 2 yo looks me dead in the eyes and does whatever the fck they want.
She will absolutely not watch peppa pig while we sound out SAT PAN and TAP. Not even for a biscuit

You are normal and your children are normal!
Also I would be very politely annoyed at the nursery about the nap times. If my 2 naps for more than an hour she won’t go to bed til 10pm. She’s currently still being put to bed by my husband. People will think we are weird or pushovers or she’s over tired etc. she will not sleep early in the evenings if she’s had a long nap. I know my child and this is fact. Don’t let anyone question your reality or your parenting ability!! Some kids love sleep and can have a 5pm nap and still go to bed at 7:30. Some absolutely cannot for life or death:

I agree. I get stuff goes wrong sometimes but it’s irritating and you’d like to think they can follow direction. The attitude on some of the comments the OP has made has been really poor though and to be honest, for the sake of 1 day a week inconvenience I personally wouldn’t be uprooting my toddler from the only childcare she’s known.

Would you ask them to bite the bullet and stop the nap altogether? If she's not having it 5 out of the 7 days anyway...?

I’m not talking about winning to spite them, just winning in the sense that I’ll get what I need which is for DD not to be up until past nine. I’m glad if they do have children to take her place; I have no desire to make their life difficult. I just can’t pretend it dormant impact my life.

DD1 sounds like your nephew! DD2 isn’t quite as reliable but she’s pretty into her sleep. The only downfall is we have natural early risers (and before anyone says it, we have tried everything to adjust this, no naps, earlier naps, short naps, long naps, early bed times, late bed times bla bla) so have settled on us as parents also having early nights and accepting 0530/0600 is when we get up. I think that is karma though 🤣

I home school my eldest child with a 2 year old here full time as well. I think you are being a little bit dramatic.