Discover the magic of naps
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With my daughter convinced that I hold some sort of magic power over young children at naptime, I’ve been asked to pass on the ingredients of my recipe to frustrated parents and caregivers who want and need their young ones to take a nap. When I think back to my early parenting days, it’s hard to recall who needed the nap more, my children or me.
The most important component of a successful nap is a calm adult — someone who isn’t feeling rushed to accomplish something supposedly more important. I rarely findanyone fitting the description of calm these days, especially not parents of young children.
But anyone can learn to calm the mind and body, and this is what is most needed when initiating a nap routine. Children will follow your lead. Wind down to a slower, quieter time the hour before a nap. Put on quiet music; speak with a quieter voice; and quit moving at world- record speeds. There’s no multi-tasking when it comes to naptime. Rest is the only goal.
Recognize that a child who isn’t hungry finds it easier to relax. That post-Thanksgiving dinner sleepy syndrome happens just as easily with a glass of milk or a lunchtime peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich as it does with an overload of turkey. In fact, I’ve seen toddlers fall asleep rhythmically chewing a smooth, gooey PBJ.
Little people need time to quiet their wiggly bodies, and being wrapped in a warm blanket helps this happen. How, you ask, do you motivate squirmy young ones to wrap up and get warm? Make the temperature in the nap room is just cooler than is comfortable. When the ambient air temperature cools, it signals the body it’s time to rest.
Although not necessary, and some would say ill-advised because children should learn to rest alone, snuggling with toddlers presents great opportunities to have the most heartwarming, wonderful conversations. Now that I’m a grandmother and realize how fleeting these moments are, I make every effort to relax with my grandchildren. Besides, more often than not, I’m up for a nap myself.
I begin naptime playing a game where I name all the people they know and love. I say, “and cousin Erin loves you,“ and they repeat, “and cousin Erin loves me.” When the list runs out, which takes awhile because we include everyone’s pets, we begin again, speaking slower and quieter with each name.
My youngest grandchild loves to chatter about anything and everything, so sometimes we practice listening as part of the settling down period. Do you hear the cars outside? Do you hear the birds? Can you hear the wind? Questions that require a slight nod or smile work better than ones that need a verbal response. Listening for easily heard noises to more difficult to hear sounds, requires more and more quiet attention and less and less movement.
When the inevitable yawning begins (either by me or them), I begin to blink my eyes open and shut very, very slowly, hinting that I’m just about to nod off. At this point imitating what I’m doing has become part of our game and tiny eyes start to droop and the sweet sound of sleepy, even breathing inevitably follows.
Obviously, none of this is magic, but it does require effort, self-control and time — skills any parent or caregiver desires children to develop but skills we adults frequently have difficulty practicing ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times I anxiously put my children down for a nap with my heart racing, my patience waning, desperately hoping they’d hurry to sleep so I might get the last load of wash done.
Calm is good, healthy and necessary. Entire cultures value midday calm so much it is built right into their social system.
The magic of helping children to rest or nap lies in valuing the calm it takes to make it happen. Sometimes a sprinkle of grandma’s experience
doesn’t hurt either.
