What would you do? (nap issue)

[Lee-Bee]

I believe sleep is crucial to the brain and body's development and as parents (and caregivers) we need to ensure our children learn to like, value, appreciate sleep.

My just turned 3 yr old has big naps still and sleeps 11-12hrs at night. On occasion she doesn't need a nap BUT she still goes to bed with the same routine and she happily lies there near silent for 2 hrs. She sings, talks, plays and stares at the ceiling. There are other nights where she did a huge nap and therefore isn't ready for sleep at 8pm...but she is in bed, alone in the dark at 8pm and she again just lies there still, quiet and calm.

I think we NEED to have children learn to appreciate the still and quiet time. They need to learn to just think and process and relax. BUT this is a long, painful process for the adult because it means months and years of training on our part to make sure we do NOT allow poor sleep habits to form. It is just easier to exhaust kids so they don't put up a fuss or to cave to their many demands to stall the bed routine or to engage when they try to get up over and over and over. My daughter is HIGH energy, non-stop chatterbox with a very fast moving brain (like turbo speed) but she knows she is to rest in bed when we put her there. She knows she is not allowed to get out of bed once we put her there. This process was learned through a lot of work on our part. We NEVER left her to cry it out or anything like that...we just slowly worked to the end goal we wanted and we made sure to never allow her sleep to get to something we didn't want. If you don't want your 3 yr old running out of their bed all night you don't let you infant out of their bed at night.

It is harder to untrain than it is to train.

A movie at nap time provides NO rest for the child, though it is a totally acceptable way to keep them distracted so you get YOUR rest which is also crucial. But what goes on the in the brain of a child watching tv is NOTHING like rest. I am not against tv by any means but we do need to be careful when we use the terms rest with watching tv.