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?

Gina Ford’s book is written about babies.

Babies generally do slot in and sleep anywhere far easier than toddlers do. I could pretty much do anything when DS was a baby, he’d nap in the sling, pram or car.

I. Can’t. Do. That. Now. He’s. Eighteen. Months!

I think it's pretty much down to what they get used to too - to an extent. And obviously, sometimes you have no choice but to get them used to sleeping on the go, especially when you have more than one child.

DS was born right before the pandemic. We had literally nowhere to go so used to go on long walks and he'd sleep in the pram until 6m old - then he would just be too distracted to drift off. When at home, he'd needed to be rocked / held to sleep. But we had nowhere to be so I was more than happy to do that. I couldn't put him down though (he never used the cot!) and he was a contact napper until his 1st birthday, then afterwards he'd just use our bed.

From 6m old (when he no longer napped in the pram), I have consciously worked around his nap time and stayed in. But I have nothing pressing to do, I happily run my errands, meet friends, go to playgroups when it's not his nap time. It's only 1,5-2 hrs now and it's a bliss for me too to have some down time. No way I'd rather be out instead - suppose it's all just preference and different routines. And sometimes you don't have a choice. Don't think there's a right or wrong way, whatever works for your child and family.

@ForestFae the fact you’re saying it would be incredibly difficult if your child needed to nap at a certain time and at home contradicts what you said about being child led.

surely if you’re child led it wouldn’t matter, because you don’t have any routine so if they had a routine of needing to nap at home it wouldn’t bother you as you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything else at a certain time?

I remember when I was pregnant a friend who was also pregnant with her second baby told me she’d got a routine all planned out. I was amazed as I hadn’t a clue about routines and I thought, why would you enforce a routine before you know what they are like? I do totally agree that you have to roll with the child you’re given. We hadn’t any clue what to do when our boy was born but we did find that making sure he got proper naps were what suited him best.

I don’t have just one child though, so it’s not that easy - I have to fit in with my other two dc, so if I had one that was really picky about naps it would be hard, because my other two would probably be annoyed at having to stop what they were doing to come home, or not being able to go out at all at a certain time. That’s why I’m very happy my kids have all been go with the flow when it comes to naps, it makes life with multiple children much easier.

Yes, I do. I value my sanity.

@ForestFae interesting what you say about it being hard work to do cot naps with more than one child - I found that actually made life MUCH easier, when DD2 went down for her nap I got 2hrs uninterrupted to spend with DD1 which was incredibly important to us both.

Also, what do you do about naps when you're at home? If they only sleep in the pushchair, do you have to take a walk every single day? That would be so much more irritating for me than having to be at home, especially if I was trying to HE too! Isn't that very disruptive to your older children's education if you have to go out for a nap multiple times a day?

I can see how that would help.

Mine didn’t only sleep in the pushchair, they’d sleep anywhere. Literally anywhere. I could put them in the cot if I carried them into it once asleep but usually, if we were at home they’d just snuggle up on the rug or the sofa. We tend to do a lot of child led, outdoor learning and we’re often out the house anyway so it’s never really been disruptive.

@ForestFae it's great that your kids do that. None of mine did. They're all different

I think with more than one child as others have said I’d love nap time to be time I get to spend with my other child uninterrupted and I would know the second child is safe in their cot

I love the time with my other child but it means we can’t go anywhere which always seems unfair, I never have mine nap in the pushchair to mooch around town as was suggested up thread but I do so we can go to a group or class or nursery etc. It’s balance, and what works for you is fine but nothing wrong with the child sometimes sleeping in pram, sometimes I even rock mine pram in the house as I know we will need to leave before they wake up, so can literally just push them out the door. Nothing wrong with napping in the cot but there is a slight tone from some posters that it’s a superior way to nap, it’s not, whatever works for your child and family.

At 18 months you could almost used my sons daily nap to tell the time, he would without fail go down for a nap at 12:45 everyday, he would usually only nap on me, so I didn’t have to be at home, we just needed somewhere with a comfy seat so I could be sat down while he napped on me. Or if the weather was nice I’d read at the park while he napped. He wasn’t a long napper though, he maintained his nap until a few weeks shy of his forth birthday, but he rarely napped for more than an hour.

Nonsense. You just randomly all eat at random times throughout the day.

You never get up in the morning and brush teeth, get dressed and have breakfast every day?

You never do anything ever in a weekly basis, such as swimming lessons, seeing auntie, going to library, food shopping, toddler groups. Etc

You never ever do the same thing at bedtime? Eg teeth,PJs book? It's always different from one bed time to another?

I don't believe you have "no routines".

Mealtimes are at a different time each day, and no, mornings look different every single day. I don’t have a pattern of “get up, get dressed, get breakfast”. No, I don’t have set patterns for doing those things either - we don’t do grocery shopping on a set day, we do it when stuff is running out, which is a different day each week. And I didn’t do toddler groups either, the closest thing is we do a forest school but the day changes as it rotates and we don’t go every week, it’s book as you want. And yes, bedtimes are always different, my kids don’t have a set bedtime as such so we take it based on the day and when they seem tired. There’s no routine about it.

Why do you find this hard to believe lol? I find it odd that adults have a routine about things like getting up, it reminds me of robots, but I understand people do it.

I feel like @ForestFae is getting an unfair beating here for some reason. One of the most contented children I know was brought up as she described, both parents are musicians and she had 3 older half siblings. She just used to do everything her parents did, including late night trips to jazz clubs. No routine at all, but a lot of stimulation. I hung out with her mum a lot when she was little and she was such a chilled baby/toddler.

I would of loved to parent like that as I too hate routine, but sadly I was gifted a child who would not nap of his own volition but really needed the sleep. He is an exceptionally active child though, he gets a lot of comments about it. Even as a newborn he would just keep going getting crankier and crankier. He needs cajoling into naps at precisely the optimum wake window. We had a long phase from 5-11 months where all naps had to be contact in the quiet. He would wake up after 30mins in the pram and be miserable. Thankfully that changed and he could be pushed in the pram to fall asleep and brought back inside and would stay asleep!!! He won't fall asleep without the pram for me. He just wants to play instead, but he will do it at nursery.

So at 18 months I do prioritise his nap because he's a nightmare without it. But we can easily go to an activity in the morning and take lunch with us. Then he'll fall asleep on the journey home and get parked up in the front room. Most people we know do this tbh, apart from those who are unfortunate to have children who won't fall asleep in the pram. They tend to leave activities early to get back for the nap, I don't think it is their preference though.

I think you just know the type of child you have and you do what suits them to make your life easier.

@LGBirmingham ForestFae is getting a bashing, not because she doesn't use a routine but because of her ridiculously OTT faux-incredulity that any babies ever nap happily in their cots, and her insistence that people who follow routines are bizarre robots. Her complete failure to understand that her lifestyle is very unconventional is coming across as massively disingenuous, which is what is getting people's backs up.

Mealtimes are at a different time each day

Right, you eat when you’re hungry, yes?

My child naps when he’s tired.

Yes, we eat when we’re hungry. At different times though - how does your kid get tired at the same time each day?!

It’s quite normal, you know.

I find it strange - surely different days are more exhausting than others, hence different sleep needs, different food needs and so on.

Of course, so he might fall to sleep any time between 1130-1230, and I probably have lunch between 12 and 2.

Everyone has been saying this to you

How do your child/ren not become tired at the same/similarish time each day?

Still restrictive though! If you like it that way crack on, but I wouldn’t.

Because they wake up at different times, do different activities, and each day is different from the last? What a bizarre question.

So did my son, still napped at the same time everyday for about three years.

None of mine ever did that 🤷🏻‍♀️