Nap Transition from quiet dark room to preschool room light with other kids and noise

So my son has been diagnosed dd and will start special ed preschool fulltime next fall. They will have a "rest" time for an hour and a half in the afternoon. My concern is right now he naps 2 hours at home in his pitch dark room with white noise. Will he sleep at school with tons of other kids and light not dark? Did your kids do this transition? If so, how did it go? Any advice is welcome.

 

I'm not sure about preschool but at our daycare they have "rest" time from 1230-2 and the kids that are napping are in the pitch dark with music on. I think they take the ones that don't nap to watch a little movie or read books...I should mention they have preschool aged kids as well.

 

I had asked my preschool about this. My boys will be starting in July. They said they teach the ones that don't sleep about quiet time and have quiet activities with them like books and other quiet games. They have to remain on their cots while the rest of the class sleeps. The lights are turned down, but I don't know about music or sound. The school will continue to encourage sleep unless the parents say not to. They get 2 hours (at least for the 2 year old class).

I have no idea how my boys will get accustomed to the new environment, but the kids that are already in the class and sleep may be an encouragement for my boys to sleep too. The school also said they do most of their activities before naptime, so the kids are often tired out enough they sleep well during naptime.

 

It took A&R about two weeks to fully get the hang of daycare, including naps. Now they will nap at daycare, on the cot, with the lights low and music on or at home, in their beds, in the pitch dark with the white noise generator on. Still won't nap in the car though.

 

My girls are great nappers at home - two hours in the dark (blackout shade). They transitioned to preschool in February and did amazing. The classroom is incredibly light and bright and there are 10 other kids. They all sleep on mats on the floor with little pillows and a stuffed animal brought from home. Naptime at school is only 1.5 hours and I get the impression it takes the kids a few minutes to fall asleep, but usually the teachers will tell me that my girls got a good hour and fifteen minutes of sleep. Within a week of going to school, they were napping regularly with no issues. So I guess the light and other bodies nearby doesn't bother them!

 

I hope you ladies are right! I'm sure if he is tired enough he will sleep. Worse case if he doesn't maybe he'll sleep in more in the am?

 

I think my girls sleep better at daycare than they do at home... sometimes for close to three hours! When school started back up in August and I went back to work, they went into the room where they had to sleep on MATS, not cribs... I remember thinking, "Those poor teachers, this will never work..." And yet, amazingly, they lay down on their mats with all the other kids and sleep! I had to get Hannah early one day for an appointment and they were all sleeping, it was the cutest thing. They do keep the lights off and play music at nap time though. It also helped get my girls into a better routine. We still follow the same schedule (or close to it) on weekends and days off.

 

This is good news. I guess we are all able to adapt to whatever we need huh?

 

Mine have been in daycare/preschool since birth, so there wasn't really a "transition" for them, but FWIW -- their nap environment (as well as everything else) has always been very different at school than at home, and it hasn't been nearly as much of a problem as I would have expected. They just do what all the other kids are doing. They even switched to nap mats at 13 months and it was a non-issue.

They actually don't nap at home at all anymore, but when they did, the room had to be quiet and dark and they had to nap in separate rooms. Yet at school, they napped with 20 other kids, music playing, noises in the hallway, etc. And they still do (even though I wish they would quit). :laughing: