Well, I never thought I would question where a nap would be a good idea or not. Sleep is always good, right? I mean, if your child will take a nap, you should let them? If someone told me to take a nap, I would take one without question. This was always my school of thought until last night. This is when I realized that naps could be a good thing as well as a bad thing. Just to back up a bit, my oldest son took a two-hour nap at daycare yesterday. Sounds great, right? Once I saw that he had slept for that long, I immediately wondered how we would sleep once it became time to go to sleep.My husband and I have noticed  a pattern when he naps well at daycare, he does not get to bed at a decent hour that night. When he is home all day, he does not take naps anymore (which I am still in denial about), but he goes to bed around 8pm or 8:30pm. I read him all sorts of books since he wasn’t tired. One was Dr. Seuss’s

My husband and I have noticed  a pattern when he naps well at daycare, he does not get to bed at a decent hour that night. When he is home all day, he does not take naps anymore (which I am still in denial about), but he goes to bed around 8pm or 8:30pm. I read him all sorts of books since he wasn’t tired. One was Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book which I thought might make him want to fall asleep. Um, no it did not. At about 10:30pm, I tried to leave the room to go to bed, but he abruptly sat up and started crying. I told him it is bedtime, and I did not want him to wake up his younger brother. You can guess what happened next… He came to Momma and Dadda’s room. He fell asleep at 11pm. Anything I was planning to get done before bed didn’t get taken care of at all.

Parenting tip #5 If your toddler takes a nap, beware of what it may do to his/her sleep at night. If he/she doesn’t want to go to sleep until really late, I would consider scaling back on the nap (or, I know it sounds awful, potentially eliminating the nap altogether).

Needless to say, I was very tired this morning. I made a point of telling my son’s lead teacher that she would need to cut back on his nap to an hour at most from now on because of what it is doing to his nighttime routine. She didn’t seem thrilled about it (understandable), but I doubt she’ll want to come over my house and be tagged in to help my son go to bed at 10pm. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on what happens next. Hopefully, he will start napping less and sleeping more at night.