The demise of naps? by Kirsten McCulloch

My son Liam seems to have decided to start cutting down on his sleep – just in time for the new baby to arrive.

Up to now he’s always had a daytime nap of one to two hours. His friends have been gradually dropping their naps over the past two years, either because they simply wouldn’t go to sleep, or because their parents discovered that no nap meant a 6 or 7pm bedtime – as opposed to a 9 or 10pm bedtime after a nap. Throughout it all I have smugly enjoyed my hour or two of ‘me-time’ during the day (on my home days) while maintaining a 7:30pm bedtime for Liam, give or take.

But now - now, only a few weeks before our next baby is due, Liam is bucking both routines. He still takes a nap maybe every other day on average, and on the off days while he doesn’t sleep, he does usually spend an hour or so in his bedroom ‘resting’. It’s just that while resting used to mean sleeping, or at worst ‘reading’ books in bed, now it means pulling out all the things he can find to play with in his room, be it books, clothes, or boxes of old slippers… and it doesn’t include tidying up after himself either!

One day last week he came out from his room after an hour or so.

“I’m not tired anymore Mummy,” he said, which would have been more meaningful if there was any indication whatever that he had been sleeping. Instead, he’d been trying on clothes. He came out wearing a two-sizes too small snow suit and a pair of size one slippers that just covered his toes (he’s in size seven shoes these days).

Then, on the days when he does take a nap, bedtimes, or at least, sleep times, have been getting pushed back. One evening recently he seemed to be making quite a bit of noise after he was supposedly in bed – then he came out saying he needed to go to the toilet. Okay, fair enough. Except when I went down to check on him later his door was wide open (it’s usually closed, or open a crack to let some light in – we leave the toilet light on for him all night) and on the end of his bed was a pile of books. Presumably he’d opened his door to be able to see them.

Today was a no-nap day, so we figured bedtime should be easy. And it was – sort of. He was tucked in by 7.10pm and we heard nary a peep out of him. But when I went down to check on him later his door was not only wide open, but his step-stool (usually kept in the toilet) was sitting right outside his door – right next to the hallway light switch. I can only suppose that he got the stool to turn on the hall light so as to more easily look at some books, then turned it off again when he was finished.

When I was a child I used to read by the street light through my window after lights out time. But I’m fairly sure I was a little older than four when I did that! Old enough to actually be able to read the books, at least.

I suppose we could be grateful that Liam is staying in his room (more or less) and still letting us have our grown-up time before we go to bed, which will no doubt be in shorter supply when a baby joins our household. Still, I’m not sure this is really a habit I want to encourage. And either way, I’m going to be really sad to give up nap time, if that’s what it comes down to. Really sad.

Kirsten McCulloch

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