daycare family issue

Hi there. I have an issue with my in-home daycare that I thought some of you
thoughtful people might be able to help with. I have a little boy who is 4.5
yo. During our manditory mat time, he always falls asleep. I, personally,
beleive that he is chronically undeslept. But I could be wrong. Anyway, Mom
keeps asking me if nap is reequired. I tell her I don't / can't make someone
fall asleep. But they do have to have their 1/2 mat time. Like everyone, he
can fill a bin qith quiet toys and books to use during mat time. But I can't
keep him awake either. I have told her this a number of times. Her complaint
is that he has been going to sleep very, very late at night, like midnight.
When he falls asleep at 10:00, that is ok for her.

darth_breather...

Sympathies to you and her and him.

Been there, done that. Our kid was in halfday preshcool. Someone
watched him at home afternoons/evenings, and he didnt sleep. At around
4.5 he wanted to go full days and the person watching him also felt he
was too energetic in the afternoons to just have quiet play, which was
the original idea. So he started full days.

Immediate problem: the nap. It seemed like a 45-minute nap in the day
shifted his bedtime by almost 1.5 hours. Mucked up my schedule, I
needed to work after he was asleep, so started 1.5 hours later and
still had to get up in the a.m.. Getting up in the morning became
problematic for all.

May be different in the case under discussion, but we had a bedtime
routine. Bath, bed, book, lights-out, sleep.

Talked to the teachers, and they agreed to give him quiet toys rather
than a nap. Think they solved it eventually by letting him join a
non-napping group while his group was asleep. That worked fine. The
next year he moved to kindergarten, they had no naps and everyone was
happy.

Anyway, I am going to politely remain firm about nap time, since I have to.
But I am a little uncomfortable with the situation. She tells him in the
morning not to fall asleep. But he is out cold instantly when he hits the
mat. She has told me about his bedtime routine, or really lack thereof. He
goes into his room. There he can play or watch tv as long as he likes until
he falls asleep. If he falls asleep on the floor, she picks him up and puts
him in bed. She turns off the tv, which sometimes wakes him up and he turns
it back on. Rinse and repeat.

The reason I am uncomfortable is this

- I would suggest a bde time routine change if she asked me I guess. But
short of that, it really is none of my business.

- He is wicked tired and cranky a lot of the time. I think his tendency to
throw tantrums would decrease quite a bit if he weren't so tired all the
time.

stasya...

Here's another option. What if he were to have an earlier nap? You
don't say when your quiet time is, but perhaps putting this boy to bed
an hour or two earlier than your scheduled nap/quiet time will help him
go to bed earlier at night...he would still be required to be quiet at
quiet time, but since you say he's cranky all the time, perhaps if you
put him in a room by himself away from everyone, he'll go to sleep on
his own. I know what it's like to get to try to get everyone napping
together, it's not easy!

- I don't really like repeatedly being asked if nap time is required. It is.
And I can't/won't make an exeption for him as it would wreak immediate havoc
on the naptime routine that was no picnic to get started. The other kids
need the nap / quiet time whether they fall asleep or not. And I need the
time to do food prep and activity prep. I suppose I could just repeatedly
respond the way I have.

Any thoughts? Should I just go with what's going on now, and repeat as often
as necessary what the nap time procedure is? I am hesitant to ask her what
her suggestions are, since I expect that they would be to eliminate nap
time.

Ericka Kammerer...

Hmmm...she has shared some information about her
bedtime "routine," which you could interpret as a bit of
an open door. I realize it's not your business to tell her
how to parent, but you've got a problem that overlaps home
and daycare, so I think there's some ground for you to discuss
this. My temptation would be to wait until she asks again,
and then say, "I cannot change the nap situation without
wreaking havoc with all the kids' routines. I'm sorry you're
having a difficult time with him at night. Given his
behavior here, he seems to be very tired, so I'm not sure
that depriving him of more sleep will be very helpful anyway.
If you are interested, I could share some resources from my
lending library on sleep challenges." And then, share the
resources if she asks (do you have any good books on the
subject? or at least a reading list? something culled from
the 'net?).

Best wishes,
Ericka

Stephanie Stowe...

Ta da. I don't. But I could. Thanks.

cara...

Maybe you could draft a 'newsletter' that gets sent home to all the
parents (so as to not single her out?), re-iterating your
(non-negotiable) nap policy and like Ericka said, pull together some
referenced suggestions on sleep issues/recommendations for kids
including a section on bedtime routines since the two (naps and bedtime)
are interconnected and affect the child's success during the day. That
might be an under the table way of getting the point across.

Chookie...

assuming that (a) the OP has the resources to do this, (b) the mother takes
the message on board, without either getting peeved at the underhanded
approach or completely missing the message for her in it, (c) it doesn't annoy
the other parents, who already have routines in place and think the OP is
being condescending.

IOW, why try the sneaky approach when it's a problem with ONE child?

What Stephanie needs to look at is the question behind the question. If she's
being repeatedly asked about nap policy by the same person, the correct
response is, "You asked me about this last week; what seems to be the problem
with Jimmy?" If indeed the problem is that Jimmy is staying up too late, then
Stephanie might say, "As a matter of fact, I've noticed that he's tired and
cranky in the mornings, so perhaps his total amount of sleep isn't quite
enough. What time does he go to bed?" etc etc.

FWIW I had a similar problem with DS1 when he went from two to one sleeps --
the day care allowed them to sleep as long as they needed to, but DS1's waking
at 3pm meant he didn't want to go to bed till 10pm! I asked them to wake him
if he slept beyond a particular time.

Banty...

Yeah, that's another drawback of doing things that way. Everyone else, who has
been going along with no problem, is left scratching their heads over this, and
possibly even speculating. It also unecessarily "officializes" policies that
are still forming, or are common sense, are are really matters of discretion.
The time in the future you have some unusual circumstance where you *do* need to
keep a child awake although the parent disagrees (can't think of one, but, you
never know... could be some little thing just for a minute to get other kids
settled), *that* parent will be running to you saying "but here's your policy!".