The Nap Boycotter

This past month, Ivan has become anti-nap. He still needs a nap but he absolutely refuses to be put down.

It all started the week of July 20, when daycare was closed for the week, and I was home with him. He'd wake up at his regular time, between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. and would be dead tired by the time lunch rolled around. However, he started resisting his naptime. First, he'd try to stave off the nap, but by 2:30 or so he'd give in. "Sleepy, sleepy" and I'd put him down in his crib.

Then he started refusing to nap in his crib, preferring either our bed (drugi krevet) or the spare bedroom (before it got dismantled, but that's another story, loosely related to resting bed time).

Then he started refusing to go and take a nap at all.

After a week of this, he returned to daycare. Ms. Yvonne said that he goes down for a nap during the regular nap time between 1-3 p.m. There is nothing else to do, as all kids must take a nap. He doesn't have to fall asleep but he has to rest, she explained. However, he always willingly goes down and easily falls asleep, unlike some other kids who put on a show. He just watched them from his cot. At 3, she said, when it's time to wake up, she actually has to wake him up from slumber.

Well, that definitely has not been his behavior at home. As the month progressed, the nap boycott became more pronounced to the point that we've just given up.

So last Friday, when we came home from the pediatrician's, he was about to fall asleep in the car but we got home before that. He was sleepy and limp in my arms as I carried him into the house. But as soon as we got to the bedrooms, he threw a fit that he wanted to go "dole." So, dole we returned. I sat him on the couch and went to the bathroom. He looked positively groggy, almost drunk. By the time I returned a few minutes later, he was fast asleep. He slept for two hours.



Two Sundays ago, neither Andy nor I could get him to lay down. So we let him be. Kris and Olexa were coming over for a BBQ around 5:30. While Kris and I were chatting in the living room, Ivan suddenly quited down and disappeared. He fell a sleep in the dining room on the floor. He basically slept through the night.

Today, even thought he had been up since 5:30 and I could tell he started getting tired as early as 11 (as did I), he started adamantly proclaiming, "No nap, mamma, no nap." By 2 p.m. or so, these proclamations escalated into downright yells.

I wasn't allowed to take a nap either. I laid down on the couch while he was playing but he would come over to hoist me up.

So I let him be. I was too exhausted to keep fighting him.

Around 3 p.m., I went to the kitchen to eat some mac and cheese. A few minutes later, I realized that the ruckus in the living room had quited down. I got concerned. But when I turned the corner into the living room, I found this:


I scooped him up and took him to his crib. The "no nap, mamma" boycotter slept until 6:30.

Some toddlers drop naptime all together because they no longer don't need it. But Ivan does.

Ivan, I think, is doing the other typical toddler thing: he doesn't want to take a nap for the fear of missing out on things.