Scheduling around a day of naps

[daycarewhisperer]

That's the nap schedule that my son is on and the other 12 month old followed suit. The other 12 month old gets picked up between 5:30 and 6:30 depending on the day and goes to bed at 7 with no problems and my son goes to bed at 8 with no problems. I have no complaints with it and neither does the other little girls parents and they both sleep through the night sometimes my son will get up for a feeding but it's becoming less and less frequent. By 10:30 both are getting crabby and if they don't have an afternoon nap they wont last till 7 and are crabby This works for them and me.

The other baby goes to bed within a half hour to an hour and a half of being picked up? If that is the case you have way worse problems than scheduling problems.

Start there and work your way back. What time does the baby arrive?

I've never heard of a nap schedule like the one you do and I am wondering how you are holding up having such a long pounding day? Why aren't all the kids napping at the same time?

I do a morning nap right when the babies arrive until around nine a.m. Up from nine till noonish then a two and a half hour nap from noonish to three p.m. I don't provide service to children who don't need a full afternoon nap and I do two naps from birth to twoish. The morning nap gets shorter between age eighteen months and two. We also do a daily walk from nine forty five a.m. to ten thirty a.m. and lunch when we get back. The kids all play from after lunch to about twelve fifteen and then off to nap. If I allowed that late of an afternoon nap I would loose all my clients. The baby you have now who does the nap till five p.m. will start staying up way way later really soon. It works for the parents now but very soon he will be up till nine to ten p.m and then later as he gets closer to two. If the parents are willing to put him to bed so quickly after picking him up there is little liklihood they will be okay with him staying up hours later as he ages. Be prepared for them to start complaining about having him not go to bed.

My gut feeling is that this schedule is more for you and your son. Possibly you like to stay up later at night and have a later start to the day? Your child's schedule should never determine the other kids schedule. (I could be wrong about this but in case). It's best to do a day care schedule for all the other kids and then work on what is best for your son within that. When my son was little I had him on the opposite schedule of the other kids. He slept when they were up and was up when they slept. By age one he could free range the house so he wasn't with the other kids in the playroom. He eventually went onto an afternoon naptime at the same time as the kids and then he went to preK at three. It was just a couple of years of me having him on the opposite schedule so for me, a twenty year veteran provider, it's a blip in the day care radar.