Parties at nap time

The girls have been partying it up at nap time. Today we put them down at 12:45 and finally at 2 I had to go in there and sit till one of them fell asleep.

We have tried yelling at them, taking toys and pacifiers away, being nice and explaining "no no, it's bed time". So I am just wondering how everyone else handles this. Do I just ignore them and if they don't sleep they don't sleep? Once they give in and fall asleep they are out for about 3 hours and I usually have to wake them at 5 which of course moves their bedtime later and they don't fall asleep till about 9, which is not ok with me!

We are thinking of putting them in twin beds but I am worried I will never get them to nap again.

Putting them in different rooms for nap time is not an option.

Thanks for your advice/experiences!!

 

I put mine in different rooms (one in my room and one in theirs). Mine were in twin beds by then too so it was easier for one to sleep on my bed (they were 27/28mths at the time). Now since you said that wasn't an option then I would probably only let them have their pacifiers and blankets and that's it. Then I would stand near the door and as soon as I heard them fooling around go back in and lay them down. Don't say anything to them and keep doing it until they stop. This will probably take a long time to do but hopefully they will learn that it's not play time but go to sleep time. If you haven't already I would also try to make the room as dark as possible so they can't see each other either. No matter what I would still get them out of their cribs at the end of nap time no matter what time they fall asleep they get woken up at the same time. So if they only get 10 min fine. That just means they will probably be going to bed a littler earlier that night. I know it's not fun dealing with cranky kids but I also don't like putting mine to bed later either because then that changes my whole night up to and messes things up for me along with them.

 

At the same age mine were the same way and I hate to tell you this but they no longer nap....I also did not have seperate rooms for naps. We would put them down at 2 because after they dropped their am nap this worked best for us. It worked for a while then the party started. Then we worked our butts off to play them out and this worked for a while too...then more partying. We also tried waking them up earlier and putting them to bed later in a desperate attempt to keep their naps gong. For a while we just put them down just to get our piece of mind and them some quiet time. Sometimes one would fall asleep sometimes both but usually none. We were finding it took too long for them to fall asleep and we were losing the battle slowley. Now the are up at around 9am no nap and in bed at 9pm. It seems like a long time but seems to be working. They generally are not cranky with this schedule and fall asleep fast which was a whole other battle for us but seems better now. Our DD was fighting bed time and making noise well into 11pm but now she is getting better.
Good Luck

 

Thanks for you replies.

I am SO NOT READY for them to give up naps! What would I do with them all day???

I think today my new approach will be no yelling just laying them back down and if that doesn't work sit in their room till one of them falls asleep. I think M is the instigator and that E would go to bed if M wasn't starting the party. I guess I will find out!

Thanks again!

 

We spliit them up so one is in a pack in play in another room if we need to, but otherwise I found that threats of punishment if silence is not established within 15-30 minutes is helpful too. For us, that means it's a loss of toys or a spanking (please noone lecture me, it's a choice we've already weighed and made for our own family) when the rules of quiet time are not obeyed during naptime. I don't expect sleep, just quiet time and no parties. I'd rather they observe quiet time than split them up if possible, since I'm VERY pregnant and setting up a pack n play is difficult. Also, we have a video camera in the room ($50 for a summer video monitor on craigslist, yay!), so the threat of "mommy is watching you on the camera" seems to help a bit, too, esp. since I let them see the monitor to know that I really can see them.

 

I'm no help because I've got mine in different rooms for naps. DD is in the nursery and DS is in our guest room in a pack-n-play.