Help! My 34 month old daughter cries constantly before taking a nap and going to bed. I have my daughter on a schedule where she has been taking naps after lunch. However, it is always a struggle to get her to nap. She cries constantly every day and does everything she can to stall napping. I know she needs the nap, because she'll be cranky and moody before dinnertime, thus making it very difficult for me to get dinner going, etc. Also, I really need her to take a nap, as I have a 6 month old who also needs me and it is very hard and exhausting running between my two girls without a break. I need that time to myself for relaxation. Once she is down though, she does nap well, about 2-3 hours per day. But that time before napping is difficult. I spend about 20 - 30 min. trying to get her to go down peacefully. How do I get my daughter to stop fighting me and to take her nap?
My son was doing the same thing. Using a timer has worked really well for us...usually. I give him a warning: "When the timer goes off it's nap time." We've gone from fighting every day to "Okay". Good luck!
I do day care, and we have our nap time after lunch too. I've been struggling with my 3-year-old lately, and what has worked well with him has been two things: first, a chart. He has a chart in his room and every day that he has a "good" nap, he gets an X on his chart. When the chart is full (the first few charts had 6, then I went to 8), he gets to pick a treat, like picking out a movie to rent.
The other thing that has helped is changing the definition of a "good" nap. I finally told him that he doesn't have to close his eyes and sleep; he just has to keep his whole body on his bed (no kicking the wall or putting feet on the floor) and be quiet. He has a basket of books next to his bed. At first, he was allowed to pick out 2 books to look at during nap time; now I let him look through the whole basket during nap time. But giving him something quiet to do (maybe giving her a book or two she can look at) and very clear rules has helped. Most days he doesn't nap anymore, but he is quiet enough to let the rest of the kids nap, and I get a little quiet time before the chaos starts up again. My guess would be that since she still takes relatively long naps when she finally settles down, if you could get her to stop fighting the settling down, she would fall asleep relatively quickly, even with a book.
Hope it helps!
She just doesn't want to miss out on anything, it is normal. It doesn't sound like she is outgrowing her naps since she does sleep for a couple hours. Just keep putting her down but you might give her a book to look at and call it a rest instead of a nap.
I noticed when my daughter was about 2 1/2 she started not wanting naps too...I just started putting her down for her naps later in the day--at the time being she wakes at 8am, she has her nap at about 3-5pm and then bedtime is about 9:30pm and she never fights anymore. She knows when it is nap time and she sleeps well.
When my daughter started becoming more difficult during naptime I realized that maybe she is not tired enough at the time I wanted her to go down. I stay home and so bedtime is not as critical so I put her to bed a little later because it is more important to me that she naps than goes to bed early. I moved naptime out 1/2-1 hour now she naps at 1:45 instead of 1 and make sure that I get her tired out with exercise and outings daily and she naps wonderfully. I still get 1 hour break when both kids are napping. If a kid is not tired why would they want to sleep?
Good luck.
When my youngest son was a toddler he didn't nap either. I put a baby gate on the door to his room and told him this was quiet time. He could read his books or play quietly. Our house was small so he knew where I was and I could check on him. I usually gave him a sippy cup and some sort of finger food like Cheerios. 9 times out of 10 I would find him asleep on the floor in about 10 minutes. By the way, I always told him the quiet time was not for him, it was for ME. Good luck . . .
I wanted to commented on the part where you say your daughter "cries constantly." One of the most valuable books I've ever read was THE AWARE BABY by Aletha Solter. There version for older kids is HELPING YOUNG CHILDREN FLOURISH. Dr. Solter talks about the important function of crying - namely emotional and stress release.
When my son was young and cried before a nap, I'd just hold him and empathize, "You're having a hard time being so tired, aren't you. Just let it all out." When he was done, he would fall right to sleep and be in much better spirits. When he was whiney and didn't have a good cry (whining usually means they need a release), he'd often wake up cranky. We've been conditioned to try to make children stop crying, but it actually make them much more pleasant afterwards. It still applies now that my son is older. When he's contrary and whiney, I know a release is coming. Afterwards, things are pleasant again!
