Naps - do you let them rule your life?

[Cm17]

FTM, Lo is 18 months old has 1 nap a day and when we are home they are pretty consistent.
She does go to a childminder full time and has a nap during the day there.

However i feel like I let nap time over rule our weekends together as a family and plan things around being home for naps like visiting parents/popping to the shops/soft play etc

Swimming is a big one for me, we took her swimming for the first time when she was 5 months old and she loved it straight away! We took her every week but since we've both been back at work she has only been maybe twice due the swim times falling on her nap time.

Now that summertime is approaching and we both work full time, I want weekends to be about us getting out and doing things as a family, especially now she understands alot more things.

I know its probably me overthinking it more than i need to but how do/did you work things around nap time?

being 18 months old now would you just do the things you want to do with your lo and let them nap when it happens around it?

That’s such an alien thing to me! My kids would never knowingly nap - they’d only nap when they eventually fell asleep doing whatever. If I’d done that they’d have gone mad!

@ForestFae no one is saying that breakfast has to be at 7am on the dot, or that nap exactly at 12. But all this free and easy, I have no routine stuff, means for many of us our children would not sleep and that isn’t fair on them, any more than not providing them with food and drink would be. It’s cruel.

I just find it weird, humans didn’t evolve with a clock and routines like this are primarily socially constructed, it seems really unnatural to me.

That’s such an alien thing to me! My kids would never knowingly nap - they’d only nap when they eventually fell asleep doing whatever. If I’d done that they’d have gone mad!

I don't understand why it's an alien thing to you? My son didn't nap in his pushchair but it's not an alien concept to me that some children are happy to do so?

Yes it's not what your children do but let's not pretend you don't understand that millions of other children are happy to nap in quiet rooms in a bed or cot and act like this is some sort of witch craft.

It’s alien to me to put a baby in a cot and have it just sleep because I have never experienced anything even close to that so much that it almost seems like myth!

I’m starting to think we’re being deliberately wound up here don’t engage people.

But that’s the pay off from not having a routine. As I said, we aren’t completely militant. DS will nap in the car and it can be at any point between 12 and 3ish. But, as most days he goes down in the cot in a very predictable fashion, he’s come to expect it. As a PP alluded to, he is none stop all morning and then understands a nap will allow him to be none stop all afternoon. I’m sure your system gives you a lot more freedom then me, but equally I’m not surprised your DC resist the cot and don’t nap until the point of completely tiring themselves out. They don’t have that predictability. Neither system is wrong, it’s just what works for different families and their DC.

Dd dropped naps at 13 months. I never put her in cot for naps. If at home she was on sofa, out and about in car or pram. I had friends who wouldn't let anything interfere with nap time and they missed out on a lot.

DD was an excellent sleeper and still is but we had a very strict bedtime routine.

Probably right. My DC are very flexible but I absolutely can’t predict when theyll sleep. There are advantages of having a routine I suppose in that you can plan around stuff - for me I prefer the freedom but if you’re someone who likes structure you’d probably hate that I guess!

Honestly quite baffled that someone who has several neurodiverse children doesn't seem to grasp that different children/people have different needs and personalities and ways of life that work for them. All this faux 'I just can't believe it!' stuff is patently nonsense.

Indeed.

humans didn’t evolve with a clock and routines like this are primarily socially constructed, it seems really unnatural to me.

... but we do have an internal clock, have you never heard of circadian rhythms? And humans have ALWAYS had routines, because we have always live in societies and therefore historically were dependent on each other for a huge number of things. If everything happened at different times and in different orders for each family it would have been chaos in a communal society.

I actually think you're being deliberately obtuse and goady here. Of course babies aren't born knowing about cots, they're not born knowing about prams either and yet it doesn't seem to shock you that babies sleep in those. we put them in the cot when we are ready to sleep because it's a safe space for them, and then we help them to become comfortable and familiar with it until they are happy to sleep there. The vast majority of babies sleep in cots.

As babies mature into toddlers, it is very common for them to stop sleeping easily in the pram, because they become more interested in their surroundings. Maybe yours weren't particularly engaged or curious about nature or people, but the vast majority are, and pram naps quickly become impossible as the outside world is far too fascinating and the toddler fights sleep.

From what you've said here, your lifestyle is very unorthodox, and frankly wouldn't work for most children. Most children, and particularly children with SEN, absolutely thrive on the predictability of routines and would find the chaos you describe, where you have no idea what's going on one hour to the next, deeply unsettling. Maybe that's why yours never napped in cots? Perhaps they felt insecure, or concerned that things might change suddenly while they're away from you?

Yes. I find our boy is much happier if we make sure he gets his naps. We manage to work around them just about and it’s nice to get a break to chill or catch up on jobs in the house/garden. He doesn’t nap in the car or pram as well as he used to do we find we have a much better day if we let him nap at home.

i know though if we had a second it would be very different!

@ForestFae babies and children love routine. It makes them feel secure and safe. It’s just the same with dogs and adults in fact!

if babies and children never know what’s coming next because their parents just want to do what they want to do, it’s really not fair on them.

we got our boy into a routine early, and it actually wasn’t hard for us and we don’t stick to specific timings it’s more a loose order for the day. This is our current one - bottle, breakfast, play, nap, bottle, play, lunch, nap, bottle, play, tea, bath, bottle, bed. it’s so lovely seeing how happy he is and not overtired, he loves going to his cot for a sleep and wakes up Happy ready to play, and we get a few hours child free (albeit trapped in the house). We put him to bed at 7 and have an evening together, and he sleeps through.

routine helps us all in our family, in my opinion.

It’s not about what I like. I manage well with unpredictability and my job and lifestyle pre DC reflects that. It’s about what’s best for my toddler, who seems to do much better with a predictable structure to his day. If I need to be in the house between the hours of 1 and 3 to keep him settled and happy then so be it. They are only small and of napping age for a really short time, in the scheme of things. It’s not that much of a sacrifice, personally.

Yes internal rhythms are a thing but they vary between individuals massively. I’m not being goady either, I hate that on MN if you express a belief that differs from the majority on a thread, you get that accusation. I’m not surprised they sleep in cots, I’m surprised they just go to sleep when parents put them down. I’m not surprised they sleep anywhere, that was my point, that most kids will in my experience just sleep when they’re tired wherever they are.

Id say my kids are more curious that most - they have adhd and they never stop messing with things, taking things apart, fiddling, asking questions and so on. In fact they’ll keep going until they just drop. Because they can’t do wind down.

id argue my lifestyle is more similar to how humans would naturally live, and it’s that other children are conditioned into routines from birth. I don’t think my kids feel or felt insecure, I think they found being in a cot in a dark room boring.

Some babies, children and adults love routine. Some do not and find it stifling.

@ForestFae teaching children how to calm down and quiet their minds and bodies for sleep is important though! Letting them thrash about til they drop is definitely not conducive to proper rest, and proper rest is vital for development.

Also, it's worth pointing out that you have no idea how your children would respond to a routine, because it sounds like you've never tried one. You might find that predictability and structure would massively improve the messing about and destructive behaviours you're seeing - it does for a huge number of ADHD kids.

One of my dc would have to have the sleep she needed, when she needed it, or the rest of the day would be a living hell where nothing could get done at all, the other one was more flexible and things could slide a bit.
We aren't routine people, we did what we had to to survive.

They don’t thrash about - that’s the point. If I did it the way of putting them into a cot, they absolutely would. The way I do it, they sleep when they’re actually tired and ready to sleep.

And none of the routine lovers know how their kids would respond to a completely routine free lifestyle because they never tried it from birth and are bound by routines themselves 🤷🏻‍♀️ My kids aren’t particularly destructive, and are generally very happy. I have adhd myself, I hate routine with a passion and always have. So does DH, also adhd. I don’t personally agree that routine is beneficial for adhd, many adhders say the same. Some like it, but plenty of us hate it. Some dislike it but find it necessary. I do not find it necessary and instead prefer to respond to my children’s cues as they arise.

@ForestFae Did you try to put them down for a nap as babies? I know it’s different for everyone, but for me I was keen to get a bit of me time and also to catch up on jobs etc so it was really helpful for me to be able to put him down and know he was resting. It all started because he stopped napping for long in his Moses basket downstairs and on me, so I started trying the cot and it worked.

when we could see he was tired we put him down in the cot from about 2 months. He understood it pretty quickly as he slept there at night anyway and it was all familiar. Now when he’s tired and I hold him in the nursery he looks over and leans towards the cot because he can’t wait to get in it! He smiles and giggles as I put him into his sleeping bag and then I leave the room and he falls asleep.

I’ve got a baby napping on me right now, ha! So I’ve had time to read the full thread. I think one of the things that hasn’t been mentioned in all this is that many toddlers who are napping now were born in lockdown. My toddler learnt to nap in her cot because there wasn’t much of an alternative when she was a baby. I could take her out for a walk specifically for her to nap (which I often did when she was a small baby), but there was nowhere to go, really. Where I live we were in lockdown almost constantly. So she could either nap in a (constantly moving) pram for two hours, or she could nap in her cot for two hours. The cot nap is a lot more restful for both of us!

Not particularly - I just got on with life but added the dc into the mix. They slept wherever we were. Pram, sling, on the sofa, on the rug, car…they were never fussy. I didn’t want them to only nap in one place and wanted to be able to do normal things. We spent a lot of time outside the house too.

@ForestFae we have tried no routine - that was what we did for the first few months when we didn’t have a clue what we were doing as first time parents. We found he responded really well to knowing what was coming next. Of course we’re not militant about it and wouldn’t put him down for a nap unless he’s actually tired. But a lot of children and babies can look really excited and engaged when actually they’re becoming overtired, and that’s also when it’s time for quiet time and a nap.

But as pp said, most people seem to have routines for their own lives anyway so was it really “no routine”? When I say no routine I mean none at all