Quiet Time

[Guest Anonymous]

I may be one of the few kids for whom the whole "just lie down and relax "thing didn't work. My mother would try to get me to take naps but when she would come to check on me 10 or 15 minutes after putting me down, I would be lying there wide awake and saying, "Mommy, is this over yet?" I took one real nap my whole childhood and that was only because I was sick. Just the way I'm wired I guess.

My poor mother. Even now she will laugh ruefully and say, "You were definitely UP all day!" Now, I luuuurve naps. Wish we'd have 'em at work.

[gustava]

Yes... wtf? It's as if she chewed up Godey's Ladies' Book and a bottle of Pepto Bismol and vomited it all over the page.

Spew shield alert :P

[Feberin]

I think nap/quiet time is important for everyone. My son is only 18 months and still takes a nearly two hour nap almost every day. On rare days when he won't nap I spend about an hour trying to get him to fall asleep before giving up. He's a cranky mess if he doesn't get a nap and sometimes can't even stay awake for dinner. Luckily that's only happened a handful of times. And on days when he's home with my husband he typically naps two and a half to three hours because my husband really exhausts him. When he reaches a point that he is no longer napping I will expect him to have quiet time for around an hour or so. I wouldn't force him to lie there silently but I will expect him to read, play quietly or watch a movie/tv. It was how I was raised and I think it might be one of the reasons I love to read since I typically spent the time reading or looking at books before I was old enough to read.

[Rosa]

My son's not a sleeper, neither were either of us - his dad only sleeps 5-6 hours a night now, and I need 8 but when I was a kid I never napped. I had the enforced "quiet time" for an hour a day when I was a preschooler and maybe a little later, but it was just "go in your room & leave Mommy alone" time, not "be absolutely silent, child" time.

I think at 18 months mine might have been taking an hour or two nap in the afternoon and then sleeping 8 hours at night. It was always 4-6 hours less than his same-age cousins, I was always SO JEALOUS of their sleeping 12 hours a night and napping 2 anyway. Now he's in school, no naps, just sleeping 9pm-6 am - and he's learned to get up and play quietly until the clock says 6, even if he's up at 4. Which he is sometimes.

[Austin]

Our boys took naps until they went to first grade. They got up extremely early (6:00 a.m.), and by the time 2:00 p.m. rolled around, they were quite ready to lie down and be read to for a bit. I would read aloud for 5-10 minutes and they would invariably fall asleep and sleep for an hour. Then they'd get up and go down to bed for the night by 8:00 p.m. and sleep 10 hours.

I think some of this is genetic. I'm a horrible sleeper and always has been. I never took naps, according to my momma, at least not willingly. My husband, on the other hand, can sleep any time, anywhere. Clearly, the boys inherited their father's sleep ability. :D Thank God. I have to say, an hour of quiet time every day probably really helped me maintain some semblence of sanity during the kinetic little-boy years.

But yeah, five hours a day? That's. . . crazee.

[Guest Anonymous]

This woman is nuts....training a 9 month old for an hour (or more) of quiet time....grrrr....naps I understand vary (I had one kid who would take a 3 hr nap until aged 3, another who stopped napping around 2, and my 3rd takes half an hour a day at 2 yrs)....but, praying during her quiet time my ass, she's blogging or surfing.

[bananacat]

I think it depends on the age of the child. I spent some time in before/aftercare in elementary school (heaven forbid---my parents placing me in the card of others!) and I remember the rare school days off when my parents didn't get off work and I would be stuck there :( (also have a brother 6 years younger who went to the same daycare). And I remember the boredom of "nap time" as an older child. We (the older ones) were never made to keep our mouths shut, but we were expected to lie in the cots and not disturb the younger, supposedly sleeping kids. I remember usually just lying there and reading the whole time.

Oh, I never know anyone who expected elementary-age children to take naps. I've known some kindergartners that took them (including myself), and I often fell asleep on the bus ride home in first grade, but I haven't known of any 6 or 7 year-olds required to take naps.

When I was in day care, the older kids would go to the public pool after lunch with the baby-sitter's teenage daughter. It was fun for us and quiet enough for the toddlers and preschoolers to take a nap. On the days we couldn't go to the pool (snow days, rainy weather, forgot a bathing suit), we would do something quiet but we were never expected to nap. It was the only time we were allowed to watch tv (in another room), or we could play with "little legos" which weren't allowed out when all the little kids were around because they could choke too easily.

[Chrystal-J]

This woman is nuts....training a 9 month old for an hour (or more) of quiet time....grrrr....naps I understand vary (I had one kid who would take a 3 hr nap until aged 3, another who stopped napping around 2, and my 3rd takes half an hour a day at 2 yrs)....but, praying during her quiet time my ass, she's blogging or surfing.

I'm with you--she's surfing the net looking for pictures of women in Victorian dresses and men in suits of armor.

My son never slept through the night in his life and never took naps (he's an adult now). I just let him play outside or inside all day when he wasn't in school. Or, if I needed to take a nap, I just let him watch TV.

[Clementine]

I am sorry for her losses, but that woman is crazy. She's like the daughter that Lady Lydia wished she had: long hair, lace dresses, overdecorated china, crocheted things, flower clip-art, victorian paintings... ewww...

It's sort of sad to see a woman who probably was considered the cutest girl in school in the 80's... that really made an impression on her so she decided to not change her style. Ever.