AIBU to ask nursery to adapt lunch times for DS?

[bouncingblob]

So our son seems to run on an internal bodyclock more like a teenager than a baby.

He's one and in nursery full time, but on weekends, days off or before my maternity ended, he will go to bed sometime between 7 and 8 and sleep for anywhere from 12-14 hours. Then in the afternoon he'll go down for a nap which could last anywhere from 2-3 hours. He's been on one nap a day since 10 months and consolidating sleep like this since about 4 months.

This is great at weekends as we get a lie in and plenty of time to get stuff done too.

He will normally get his breakfast, at the weekends, sometime between 8 and half 9. Then there'll be a bottle before midday, and then the nap normally starts sometime between 11-12. So he's then having lunch between 2-3, and dinner could be starting as late as 6 if he's had a late day. Even with all that, he'll settle no bother for bedtime by 8 at the latest.

All sounds blissful, and indeed it is.

But nursery caters to the masses, not the unicorns. So firstly, we have to wake him up about an hour earlier than he's ready to, which makes him a bit cranky to start the day. Feed him his breakfast and then he's in nursery by 9.

This is where it all goes pear shaped. They feed them lunch around 11-11.30am. This is, as you can see, up to 3-4 hours earlier than he normally has it. It's also less than an hour after his morning bottle, so he's not hungry, and the end result is he's almost never eating his lunch at nursery.

He'll go down for his nap and they give them a smaller snack around 3ish, which he sometimes takes and sometimes doesn't.

Obviously I know the nursery can't change their entire way of doing things to accommodate one child, nor would I ask them to. But equally, particularly considering he's over one and will soon be weaned off the bottle, it's not going to be viable to have him skip lunch 5 days a week.

Do you think it would be a reasonable accomodation if I asked them to just let him have his lunch during snack time, and to skip that morning lunch feed instead?

He's one, you don't need to wean him off the bottle, you just stop it. HV advice has changed relatively recently to prioritise food over milk so that would align. If he's not hungry, he won't eat (contrary to previous advice about food just being fun until 1). Also, he's getting a huge amount of sleep... Mine were excellent sleepers but 14 hours at night and 3 in the day?! That's possibly too much and should be looked at?

I don’t really understand what your concern is? It’s normal for their schedule to be a bit different at home vs nursery. You’re saying that he’s not really eating when he’s at nursery…. And so what? He’s there for a few hours and will be offered food at multiple opportunities. If he’s hungry he will eat, if he’s not then he won’t. If he doesn’t eat much there during the day then he will be hungry for his dinner when he gets home, again what’s the problem there?

It doesn’t seem to be causing a problem other than that you don’t like it that he’s not on the same schedule / eating much at nursery. I really wouldn’t stress about any of it. Clocks will change soon, or the wind direction, or he will get a new tooth, have a growth spurt etc and his current schedule will be a thing of the past anyway!

Not really, most toddlers are up by 6am, and the staff have to then clean up, change nappies and get them down for a nap. Ours have lunch a bit later, more like 12pm.

It works the other way round, stop the bottle (which is advised dentally over 12 months anyway), and he'll eat lunch. Also have realistic expectations, most toddlers don't eat 3 full meals a day.

But are most toddlers up by 6 because they have lunch at 11, dinner at 4 and go to bed at 6? It doesn't seem very compatible with normal life.

This was my DD at 3.5 starting school nursery. Start at 9am, toast at 10am and mandatory school lunches at 11:45. Her body clock ran noon till midnight (like mine - I don’t eat anything before 2pm, usually later) so her lunch would get binned and I’d have to take her a packed lunch at 3:30pm after school.

She’s now 15 and still eats the bulk of her lunch after school.

Both those numbers would be at his absolute upper end so if one was hit the other wouldn't be, unless of course he was ill in which case all babies do require more sleep.

As a long time nursery manager I can guarantee you they will/can not do this for your unicorn. Imagine the chaos if every one of the masses was a unicorn

Why would an 11:30 lunch and a nap be incompatible with normal life? Most children want to sleep after lunch, if lunch is late the nap is too late.
6 isn’t a particularly early time to wake, most families have some combination of work and school runs and are generally out of the house by 8. Waking at 6:30 suits that fine.

The nursery absolutely won't change their schedule to accommodate. I feel your pain though, my kids worked to a similar bedtime and wake up schedule to yours, less naps admittedly, and 11-11.30 lunch has always seemed madness to me. It's so early to kids who haven't started their day at 5-6am. It seems pretty universal though, even reception eat that early at our school. I don't get it but you just have to work around it.

I think it's compatible with working life and nursery. Most adults need to leave for work by 8. If child was at home with a nanny or parent, it would be a different story.

You can ask but I doubt they’d do it. They have too many other kids to keep on schedule.

I actually wouldn't even ask. You'll get put on the mental list of "Those Parents."

They are not going to change the nursery schedule around him, and tbh he doesn't need a mid-morning bottle at a year old.

I wouldn't even ask, they are very unlikely to do it.

You need to adjust him to the nursery routine rather than the other way around. I'd wake him up at 7 every day and time his naps so that he isn't sleeping through lunch. He'll soon adjust.

Most?!

Care to explain your issue? Most people I know in office jobs have to be at their desks by 8.30/9. Teachers and medical professionals even sooner. Shift workes are whole different category altogether.

Yes most adults who use a nursery with standard opening hours for childcare will generally work 9-5 for obvious reasons.

I don't agree that you can just go cold turkey on the bottle. It took us until he was nearly 11 months just to get down to the recommended 500-600ml intake alone.

I can guarantee you if I take all three bottles away tomorrow he will scream the neighbourhood awake until he gets one.

Now, I know he needs to drop them, but with him it's going to have to be a gradual transition over a few weeks. Of course it would help massively if he'd drink cold cow's milk from a beaker but he's not going to drink that...if his milk isn't warm he isn't touching it.

So we do need to find a solution, but that solution isn't "just stop giving him the bottle". That won't work.

I don’t have any tips OP but you do have my sympathy, DD1 used to eat a massive breakfast but then not be hungry until 1pm, whereas our (school) nursery started afternoon sessions at 12:30 and expected them to have eaten. Thankfully DD was able to do morning sessions after another family swapped!

DD2 is the opposite, like me she was not hungry for breakfast but would then eat a massive lunch at 11:30. Afternoon nursery sessions suited her fine, but morning would have been a disaster.

We had years of different mealtimes for the two of them, but thankfully they did grow out of it!

He’ll scream for a day and then it’ll be over.

Theres no way to really have a gradual transition, at some point it’s still just taking away the bottle, might as well just do it at once, dragging it out won’t be beneficial for a 1 year old.

Its like saying they’ll get less time before bed with their dummy and then still taking it away in the end but expecting them to understand.

Sometimes he will scream the house down because he doesn’t want his teeth brushed, but as a parent you just need to do it anyway.
He’s barely eating because he’s filling up on milk with very limited nutrition for his age. He needs to be eating a wide range of food and that’s limited by the sheer volume of milk.

Stop the bottle now, and he’ll be hungry for lunch. You can always ask him to be given the bottle mid afternoon. He doesn’t need the morning bottle if it mean he isn’t hungry for lunch. FWIW I had to massively cut back bottles to get any of my DC (as babies) to eat anything at all.

How long has he been at nursery op? I found that when I started ds they were quite good and worked to his routine with naps and meals etc for the first couple of weeks and then they all gradually seemed to fall into the same routine as each other. So he'd have started at 11 mths and by about 12/13months he was in routine with all the others who'd been there before him.

If you drop the morning bottle he won't scream all day, he'll just eat his lunch with the other kids and go for a nap.

I understand it can be tricky OP, but you can't let it become a case of tail wags dog.

He needs to be cutting back the milk. it isn't just the timetable, it's his diet too. I'm much bigger than him and I don't reckon I'd eat enough other things if I had three bottles a day! It's over a pint of milk.

The amount of sleep and milk is very unusual for a 1 year old. Nursery’s schedule is very normal for toddlers. 17 hours of sleep is a lot. My dd had a half hour nap in the afternoon and stopped napping at 18 months. No regular milk.

Wake him earlier than 8 (which is late for a toddler), stop all the bottles (cup of milk in the evening is fine), stop the 2-3 hour naps (1 hour is fine). Instead of bottles give your son meals.