Since the fateful day of "The End Of Naps", Jack has thrown me a bone a couple times a week and actually will go in his room and play quietly all by himself! Of course, it is all a pretense that he is going to be "taking a nap" when in fact he knows and I know that he will NOT be taking a nap. We do this little ritual every single day. I will say it is naptime. He will say an emphatic NO. I will say an emphatic YES. We will walk to his room and do the laying-down-for-a-nap ritual. I will walk out, blow him a kiss, he will say "nite nite", and then I will close the door. It is all a sham.
The reality of it all, is that in less than 2 minutes he will be up out of the bed and in most cases, screaming "Mama" at the door. He is very smart too because he knows I will ignore the screams for a few minutes, unless he says the words "I have a stinky di di". Then the smart, too smart for his own good, kid knows that I will come to change him. However, in about 50% of the cases, there is no stinky and I will tell him that and then he just laughs and the sham is over. There will be no nap forthcoming that day. Period. Sigh. No time for me to sit in front of the tv and watch the previous nights Gilmore Girls or get on the internet.
However, there are those precious few days such as this one, where he throws me a bone. I think he can sense my level of frustration with the no naps and realizes when I am at my limit with the frustration, he will then say to himself, okay fine, I'll give her what she wants. But he will NOT take a nap, oh no that would be giving up. However, he does not come to the door to scream my name. Instead, he will play in his room quietly for a period of time where I can find myself calming down and losing the frustration of earlier. And today was one of those days. And I got to see Lost that was recorded last night. An amazing 45 minutes of bliss. Just me and the tv and a cup of tea. Who knew that once becoming a mother, such bliss could exist?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Dawn,
I have a son who is now 32 years old. When he was Jack's age, he decided it was time to give up naps too. He just never requried very much sleep. His longest nap even as a baby (other than at night) was 45 minutes. I finally decided that the nap battle was not worth the struggle. It was much easier to just let him play in his room for the 45 minutes so I could have some quiet time. When he was up, he liked me to entertain him (I bet that is what Jack likes from you too!) To this day, he does not require that much sleep...it turns out he is actually a night owl.
He was also very strong willed... which is another thing in itself to deal with. They will test you to your limits. I got some help from reading James Dobson's book The Strong Willed Child.
Thought you might find some comfort to know that you are not alone.
Judy
Your Mom's friend
Post a Comment