Dear Moms,
For any of you who has a preschooler that goes to school in the afternoon, and a younger child still at home with you, how do you balance the younger one's naps with dropping off and picking up the older one to/from school?
Next year my older daughter will be in preschool, and most of the schools that I'm looking at only have afternoon classes because she's going to be in a Pre-K class, not a regular 4's preschool class. Most of them run from 12:30 until 3:00. This isn't enough time for my younger one to nap (1:00-3:45ish).
Any suggestions? I found one school - a Montessori - with the morning option, but they are more expensive than most all of the other preschools.
Thanks
I don't send my children to preschool because of the naps. I don't have the heart to wake sleeping children everyday.
My opinion is that you shouldn't let your younger child's nap schedule dictate your older child's school schedule. First of all, a lot can change in a year. Your younger one may no longer nap at the same time that she is now. Secondly, younger siblings just have to be more flexible It's a fact of life. They will adjust to whatever you have to do.
If you are truly finding this to be a major issue once you do start school, perhaps you can find a carpool buddy among the other parents at the school. Maybe one of you can take care of dropoff and the other pickup so that you don't have to wake the baby.
But seriously, my youngest has just learned to adjust. A shorter naptime is not ideal but it hasn't killed her.
Our public school pre-k is full day so I don't face this issue at all. When we did have some half days we just put the sleeping child in the carseat and left them conked out. By the time we got home sometimes they were awake but most of the time we'd just lay them back down and they'd sleep right through it.
One option is to carpool with a mom in the class and trade off, or give another mom in the class without a little one some gasoline money to transport your little one home, then the one sleeping is left sleeping.
your little one won't be napping next year the same way she naps right now. and naps are easier to tweak than school schedules.
slightly off topic, but if you can swing the montessori budget-wise, do it. not for the schedule, but because montessori is awesome.
khairete
S.
You may have to start reducing the afternoon nap a few weeks before school starts and maybe change the bed time a little so that the younger one still gets the sleep they need or add another short nap during the day.
My son does morning pre-k because the afternoon one ends so late compaired to the other 2 school day... so I drop 3 off at 8, pick one up at 11:15 and 2 up at 2:30. I still have one at home who naps from around 12 to 2, which is when I try to get the pre-k's homework done.
But all will be changing here soon with one being due 11/19... and maybe scheduled for this weekend. As one other mom said we have to be flexible & find a way of making it work... not always easy, but we have to.
I have the same issue with a 9 month old at home and a 3 and 5 year old at school. I try to put her down while they are at school for 2 hours but i usually end up waking her up to go pick up the other 2. It stinks that i have to wake her all the time, but im sure that happens when you have kids in school. She sleeps for 12 hours at night so hopefully cutting her naps short wont harm her! I hate waking her but dont have a choice. You can put your child down and then wake them when you have to go, or wait for the nap until after school if possible, which probably isnt.
In this life, we must be flexible. If we are not willing to change, we will bite our nails all the time.
You simply decide to put your child down a little earlier and get them up when it's time to go. It's really not that hard. We change naps over here ALL the time. In my busy daycare, we have all kinds of reasons we need to tweek things. We also pick a child up from school. Every year it changes. We don't do it everyday, or we might do it everyday for a few months. We have mixed ages. We often have to transition a younger child's 2 naps into 1 nap while still getting the older ones too nap. We have older ones that could skip nap, but must have quiet time. They usually fall asleep anyway. We also have parents that pick up in the middle of nap time or drop off during nap time. So yes, it's a challenge.
Yesterday, we had a child get sick. We needed to isolate her from the rest until she could go home. But we had the two cribs in one room. The babies have only just started sleeping in the same room so that they can wake up and play in their side by side cribs. In our home, the older kids sleep 2-3 hours and the babies barely sleep at all. That's what we have this year. Another year it'll be different. Well we only just put the babies together and it's been wonderful. But yesterday we had to separate them because of the other girl. Boy, that didn't go over well. Today we can re-arrange AGAIN, and put them back together. Yay :)
Your younger one's nap needs will probably change by next year. It will just be a new routine for all of you.
Kids are adaptable. Even if it's a short nap, it's better than none. Just put your younger child to bed earlier at night.
My middle child gets out of kindergarten at 10:30 AM (school starts at 7:30 AM) and my oldest gets out at 2:05. In order to give my 2 yr old a nap, I feed them lunch at 10:45 or 11:00, then he naps from 11:30-1:30. I never thought I could get him to lay down for a nap at 11:30 AM, but he adapted. When he outgrows this, he'll just skip naps and go to bed at 6:30 or 7:00 PM.
