When my daughter was about 2½ years old, she no longer wanted to have an afternoon nap. She started crying every time I took her upstairs and was very strong in her resolve that she didn’t want to sleep.
I was on maternity leave at the time with Mr A. He was 6 months old and he had a long nap in the afternoon. I really needed that time to have a rest.
After doing a little research on Mom’s forums, I found an excellent idea. They called it Quiet Playtime… It basically means you still put your little one in their room for the afternoon but you give them toys to play with instead of putting them in bed.
The name wasn’t going to go down well with Miss Z so I called it Special Playtime – that sounded a lot more interesting.
I gave Miss Z all sorts of quiet toys and spread them out on the floor: puzzles, teddies, dolls, books. There were 2 main rules – 1) you can’t make noise and 2) you can’t come out until I come to get you (she was still in nappies at the time in case you’re wondering about the potty). I also opened up her bed and told her that if she wanted, she could still sleep.
It worked like a charm. Nine times out of ten she still slept. But there were no tantrums because she was in control – she didn’t have to sleep. And it was great asking her afterwards about her play – the imagination of children is an amazing thing. She imagined different worlds, and she had all her friends with her 😉
To this day we still do Special Playtime. Miss Z only has it on weekends and these days she mostly plays with the tablet, but it’s still a very welcome break for us.
The funny thing is that for Mr A (now 3½), Special Playtime still means sleeping. He loves his naps. The hard part is actually making him play and not sleep. I think he takes after daddy 😉 I’ll need to tackle that one soon because there’s no napping when he’s in Reception… and that’s fast approaching.
We’ll see how Miss A likes her Special Playtime in the future 😉