Please pray for us...

Keep us in your thoughts, pray for us, send us good vibes, whatever it is you believe or don't believe in doing (I will be taking up a collection for any remnant Lexapro/Xanax/Vicodin you have laying around later in the week).

After a 10-day vacation where the boys, for the most part, did not nap, DH has returned home with the idea that we should give up naps altogether. :crazy: I told him I didn't agree, but would run the experiment for a week, predicted a week of severe confusional arousal episodes all night, and, if my prediction came to fruition then the experiment was over. If not, I'll eat crow.

We're (and I use that plural loosely) hoping to implement a quiet time of books or a DVD in mid-afternoon to recharge batteries (both for kids and parents). I messed with their naps before and it wasn't pretty. DH is so anxious to grow my babies up. He wants to get them into beds by the summer's end. I'm not mentally ready for this!

 

I'll say a chant in your name. Giving up naps was one of the hardest transitions for me (not so much for them) that I went through. I thought I was going to lose my mind. I'm used to it now, and especially on weekends, it is kind of freeing, but on a day-to-day basis, yeah, I would like to have naps back. I went through a period of trying to enforce quiet time, but for me, trying to enforce it was more stress than it was worth. I would get annoyed that they were not staying in their rooms, kept coming out to ask me silly questions, etc. So, usually I either just try to keep us going all day, or I'll do a 90 min movie mid-day, or I also have these books on CD that I'll put on repeat, they know to trade the book back and forth, and usually about every half our they will ask me to change the book, so that's not too bad.

They did go through a period of being really cranky late afternoon, but the upside was they went to bed pretty willingly.

 

Thinking of you!!!

We gave up naps a few weeks ago. My guys were going to bed soooo late (I think your guys do to). Skipping naps allows them to go to bed around 8 (which may still seem late to some without having naps). But to us, 8 has been awesome. We have our nights together now without the boys and it is so great.

Around 5, it can get pretty sketchy! I make sure around 4 that we are outside or at a park. Then, we come home and that is the time of the day I am sure to let them watch tv and I get their dinner ready. Then bath and off to bed!

Sometimes, I let them nap in the car if we are out and on our way home. Once we get home, I will let them finish napping in the car. I make sure those are short naps so they still get to bed early.

I always thought they would wake up super early but since they miss that nap, they have been making it up during their night sleep and wake at 7:30-8.

Keep us posted!!!

 

FWIW, I marched into Nadia's 3-year well visit saying the same thing, that she was done with naps. And, I believed that because bedtime had been a nightmare for some time at that point -- she clearly wasn't tired at bedtime, and popped out of bed every five minutes to go to the bathroom, get a drink, tell us her lovey fell out of bed, whatever. We were sick of it.

The ped nodded and smiled, and told us to have her nap every three or four days, just to let her catch up. This actually worked out well, and it turned out she *needed* it. On days she didn't nap, she would often fall asleep on the couch before dinner....we had to work hard to prevent it, otherwise she turned into the world's biggest crank upon waking, and bedtime was shot again.

Also, on no-nap days, our rule was that she must do two hours of quiet time in her room every afternoon. She could look at books, color, play -- or her favorite, listen to books on CD. (I have a bunch of children's stories on CD I could send you!) This also worked well, except if she was overtired, she'd often fall asleep on the floor.

Between 3.5 to 4 years, she was totally fine with no naps at all.

No clue how any of this works with twins, if they're doing quiet time in the same room -- I'm sure they'll keep each other awake and riled up.

Good luck! I will pray.

 

:hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug:
Does that work?

Keep us posted!!

 

Day 1
3:30 Started DVD
4:10 Joe asleep on couch
4:20 Nick asleep on couch

Planning to wake them up by 5pm and hope that I didn't just also give up an earlier bedtime AND lose a 'real' nap.

The cherry on top: DH walks by, sees them both asleep on the couch and said, "I told you so". :huh: Yeah, you're right, they don't need naps anymore. :gah:

 

QUOTE(SweetpeaG @ May 17 2009, 07:41 PM) [snapback]1317366[/snapback]
The cherry on top: DH walks by, sees them both asleep on the couch and said, "I told you so". :huh: Yeah, you're right, they don't need naps anymore. :gah:

:laughing: Best laugh I have had all day!! :laughing: MEN!!

 

Mine are just a few weeks younger than yours, and we intentionally cut out naps back about 3-4 months ago. They sleep so much better at night now - it's great! So hopefully this experience goes well for you. They went to big girl beds about 2 months ago.

 

Good luck! We are certainly not ready to give up naps... but we are giving them up next weekend! We have the sesame place weekend, and just with timing and whatnot, we are going to just try and forego naps... I will tell you, I'm scared... but we'll see how it goes and hope for hte best.

I think you guys have a great plan though ... give it a try, see if they are handling it ok. If not, just go back to having naps still... no harm, no foul. Good luck!

 

My kids have all decided that around age 2, they would stay up until 10pm if they have a nap. I can't deal with the chaos that late, so we dropped naps instead. Occasionally the twins(and Josh) will fall asleep during :db: quiet time :db: , but it only happens like once every 2 weeks now. Having that early bedtime is well worth it to me...most days anyway.

I have a few extra pills laying around, I will send you some. :crazy:

Good luck!

 

Mine will fall asleep on the couch sometimes. But most of the time, if they are busy outside etc, they will stay up til 7pm and go to bed without a problem. If they nap, they go to bed ok too. So I guess for us, it doesn't matter anyway.

Good luck Siri! :hug: I hope that your DH lets you have the naps back.

 

S - we did that at 3 too!!! It made my bedtimes SOOO Much easier!!!!

I did the same, quiet time! Do it early enough that if they do fall asleep, you won't have to alter bedtime! Sometimes Ali still naps at 4 yrs. old. Sometimes they need them and sometimes they don't. Keep it up!!! It'll be OK!!

They are going to prove BOTH of you right some of the time!!! :hug: Hang in there and go with the flow! (easy for me to say, I survived it already!)

 

I'm glad to see this post -- I was just going to ask for experiences with the nap transition. In our case it's not really intentional -- I just got so tired of fighting with Amy every weekend about naps, I decided to make them optional. I told her if she wanted to rest, she could; otherwise she could play quietly.

The good:
She has been pretty accommodating about playing quietly.
She has gotten through the evenings with not much more fussiness or manic behavior than usual.
She still sleeps through the night and is not waking quite as early in the morning.

The bad:
Because they share a room and Sarah does want to nap, Amy has to play in the living room, which means really no downtime for me.
She isn't going to bed any earlier. I keep thinking we'll try, but by the time we get dinner done it's 7:00, and then their bedtime routine is so insanely long, the light doesn't go out till 8:30 and they're not asleep until 9 or 9:15.
We can't let them sleep in past 7:15 due to daycare. I think her body really wants to catch up on the extra sleep in the morning (rather than by going to bed earlier), but that just isn't an option.

So, at the moment she is clearly overtired. She conked out hard in the car on the way home from the grocery store yesterday (a 3-minute drive) and slept for 15 minutes after I turned off the car -- through me unloading the groceries, etc. That is unprecedented in her entire life.

I guess I'm just feeling like this transition has been less smooth than I expected. I thought evenings might be a little rough, but we'd get them to bed a little early and they'd be asleep within seconds. I didn't expect that they would continue to resist bedtime and we'd just have really overtired kids. :huh:

On the other hand, it's only been two days.

 

I feel your pain, Alden. Nick is my resister extraordinaire.

The more I think about it, the more I think that it is what needs to be done, and with all the busy, fun, summertime activities on the horizon it couldn't be better timing. I pulled the trigger on them for transitioning to one nap before their bodies were ready b/c they kept wanting more and more awake time between sleeping and there simply weren't enough hours in the day to make it happen. This transition is no different...it needs doing, and I just wasn't mentally prepared.

Down/me-time selfishness aside, this isn't any different than the last major transition we made. We have had two nights of solid sleep (in bed 8/8.30, asleep from 9pm - 8am). My kids have never slept more than 9-10 hours straight in their life.

Luckily their behavior is currently in a lovely, tolerable crest so I may as well ride it before we have to struggle through a big transition on top of troughy, unbearable behavior.

 

Keep us posted... We do OK skipping here and there but two days in a row sends us into a cycle of ugliness and it gets worse on day 3 so I haven't tried past that. When we went out of town, they napped EVERY DAY and went to bed at their regular time plus waking LATER. It was fabulous! I was ready to start booking more trips and keep the summer packed with off & gone.

I wish I could remember where I read that most kids aren't ready to drop naps until age 4 and some age 5. I think that twin mommies end up pushing this stuff earlier because of the complication of one disturbing/distracting the other.

 

QUOTE(debid @ May 18 2009, 01:02 PM) [snapback]1318389[/snapback]
Keep us posted... We do OK skipping here and there but two days in a row sends us into a cycle of ugliness and it gets worse on day 3 so I haven't tried past that. When we went out of town, they napped EVERY DAY and went to bed at their regular time plus waking LATER. It was fabulous! I was ready to start booking more trips and keep the summer packed with off & gone.

I wish I could remember where I read that most kids aren't ready to drop naps until age 4 and some age 5. I think that twin mommies end up pushing this stuff earlier because of the complication of one disturbing/distracting the other.

My pediatrician was horrified!!! She was like "uhhhh....they really NEED the nap" I just told her that Mommy needs her sanity and being the one to do it ALL, I had to make sure I wasn't in the looney bin. They will fall asleep now and then and I don't prevent that....that made her happy!!! :laughing:

 

Why? Kids need naps, they are constantly growing which takes a lot of energy and not only that, but sleep helps the immune system. By not getting enough sleep can cause more illnesses. Unless your children are cutting out their own naps (which means they are ready to b/c their body says so) I wouldn't do. It's not fair to the child or their body to do it. No offense, but I never understand why parents push things onto their kids. Let them decide what is best for them. If they want to cut naps, then let them but don't force them to do it.

 

QUOTE(angie7 @ May 18 2009, 12:15 PM) [snapback]1318413[/snapback]
Why? Kids need naps, they are constantly growing which takes a lot of energy and not only that, but sleep helps the immune system. By not getting enough sleep can cause more illnesses. Unless your children are cutting out their own naps (which means they are ready to b/c their body says so) I wouldn't do. It's not fair to the child or their body to do it. No offense, but I never understand why parents push things onto their kids. Let them decide what is best for them. If they want to cut naps, then let them but don't force them to do it.


I'm cruel and unusual that way.

FWIW, I'm not actually PREVENTING them from sleeping, and, so far, they are actually getting the same hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. If they fall asleep watching a DVD on the couch at 2pm, great. But they won't fall asleep before 3pm for a nap (regardless of when I put them down, it's been experimented with), and then they won't wake up until 5:30pm, which means bedtime of 9pm and not falling asleep until 10.30-11pm...it wasn't working. If I can reboot their bodies to get all that sleep at one go from 8pm-8am I'll do it.

Debi, I agree that kids need a nap until they're older and don't doubt that there is lots of research to back that up. I wish it could continue to work for our family.

 

QUOTE(SweetpeaG @ May 18 2009, 02:17 PM) [snapback]1318416[/snapback]
I'm cruel and unusual that way.


LOL! Yeah, me too!

QUOTE
FWIW, I'm not actually PREVENTING them from sleeping, and, so far, they are actually getting the same hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. If they fall asleep watching a DVD on the couch at 2pm, great. But they won't fall asleep before 3pm for a nap (regardless of when I put them down, it's been experimented with), and then they won't wake up until 5:30pm, which means bedtime of 9pm and not falling asleep until 10.30-11pm...it wasn't working. If I can reboot their bodies to get all that sleep at one go from 8pm-8am I'll do it.


This was my situation. I am so glad to have them in bed earlier too. What a plus! (or me AND them).

QUOTE
Why? Kids need naps, they are constantly growing which takes a lot of energy and not only that, but sleep helps the immune system. By not getting enough sleep can cause more illnesses. Unless your children are cutting out their own naps (which means they are ready to b/c their body says so) I wouldn't do. It's not fair to the child or their body to do it. No offense, but I never understand why parents push things onto their kids. Let them decide what is best for them. If they want to cut naps, then let them but don't force them to do it.

I think you will see that most people that are cutting naps are having their kids get to bed many hours earlier than they were with naps.

 

QUOTE(debid @ May 18 2009, 02:02 PM) [snapback]1318389[/snapback]
I wish I could remember where I read that most kids aren't ready to drop naps until age 4 and some age 5. I think that twin mommies end up pushing this stuff earlier because of the complication of one disturbing/distracting the other.


I would have loved to have some kids like that! All four of my kids dropped naps by 2.5. I just have some unnapping kids. It wasn't because I wanted them to stop, that's for sure. I have always enforced an early bedtime though (7 p.m.). Mine were sleeping 7-6:30 (they are 6 now), but with the longer days they have stayed up later and gotten up earlier!

I wish you luck, and I think as long as they get the number of hours needed, they will be fine. Mine always were, and they got more sleep than a lot of their classmates because I don't mess around with bedtime. (I have a relative who will take her son, 4 mos younger than my daughters to weeknight hockey games and let him sleep in the car on the way home. Well, the game still doesn't end until about 10. He still naps at school. That's going to be a problem in first grade, which has no nap time.)

 

Siri, I think you're nuts :lol: but I'm glad it's going well!! GL!!