do some kids just need to cry (OR) let's talk naps - Page 6

[The4OfUs]

I guess I'm seeing this as kind of like bear hugging a kid in a raging tantrum so that they can't hurt themselves, others, or destroy anything. They're certainly not going to be happy about it, but that doesn't mean that it's not a valid way of dealing with it for *some* kids; some kids they need that physical boundary to help them gain physical and emotional control when they are out of control.

I don't think any of the mamas here are jumping up and down with glee at the thought of making their child upset, or preventing them from getting off their laps or out of their arms...but in some cases, it's the kindest thing to do - I just don't see what's respectful about letting a child who is obviously NOT picking up on their body's sleep cues get so overtired that they are unable to fall asleep or get enough sleep - that doesn't sound respectful or kind to me.

I don't envision this being done in a "mwahahahaaaa, you little creep, now I'm going to show you that you WILL sleep no matter what it is you want to do, becasue I'm the boss..." kind of tone, but something more like, "I know you want to keep playing (or whatever) - your body needs sleep to stay healthy and grow, and since you aren't able to hold still right now to fall asleep, I'm going to help you stay still for a few minutes until your body can rest." I just - I know that there are kids out there that just don't want to sleep, don't recognize their sleep cues, and don't want to miss out on one single minute of awake play time. I have two of them. I *have* in fact said those words to both of them..."if you'll just keep your body still for a couple minutes, I know that you'll fall asleep" - and fortunately, they've eventually listened and fallen asleep. But I can completley conceive of a kid who wouldn't and would keep getting up, etc. but who clearly still needed the sleep. Sleep is SO important, SO important. Reading "Sleepless in America" made me see just hwo important it is. And I would agree that you cannot *make* a child sleep - but if they fall asleep after being upset for a little bit and sleep like a rock for a couple hours, then they clearly still *need* the sleep, whether or not they *want* it.

I'm not doing backflips about restraining an upset, overtired child - if you can find a better, gentler way that still gets them the sleep they need, then great...but I'm also not going to condemn it and put it in the same league as abandoning a child in a dark room.

[HarperRose]

Originally Posted by The4OfUs

I'm not doing backflips about restraining an upset, overtired child - if you can find a better, gentler way that still gets them the sleep they need, then great...but I'm also not going to condemn it and put it in the same league as abandoning a child in a dark room.

Absolutely.

If a child isn't reading their body's cues, it's our job, as parents, to do it for them. My kids have been so utterly wiped out that they can't function. Going to bed (bigger kids) or sleep (littlest) is what is needed.

I've been known to pop ds2 in his carseat and drive him around till he fell asleep because he NEEDED it.

[lilyka]

I can actually remember sitting around doing this or that and just sobbing and freaking out and my mom saying "time for bed. you are over tired" and screaming back "no I am not" looking back if she had wrestled me to the ground and held me down while I got the sleep I needed I would not have been dissapointed. I would have prefered that to her getting angry or frustrated at my exhausted craziness (not that I blame her for getting angry or frustrated either.)

[mamazee]

As long as we're using childhood anecdotes, my mom tied me into bed for this same reason - she said I was desperately tired and needed sleep but wouldn't sleep unless I was forced to stay put. I think holding a child down in bed is better than tying a child into bed, but really they're degrees of the same thing, IMO.

[TiredX2]

OP---

have I missed what else you have tried? I know that some children, from birth, need to be swaddled to be able to calm down and go to sleep. But, to me, it seems like if this becomes as issue as a child approaches 2 perhaps they are trying to transition out of the nap. Have you tried more morning activities, an earlier wake up time or an earlier bedtime (and eliminate nap)?

I would be concerned that DD is actually learning that her screaming/crying is not being listened to. Just because a child falls asleep after screaming and thrashing around does not, IMO, mean that they needed a nap in the first place. They could just be hopeless and exhausted from trying to escape. I don't know which one your DD is (because I do know that both exist, DS, especially has been to a point where he wanted to nurse and sit up, nurse and sit up, nurse and sit up, but if I pulled him tight to me while he nursed so he wasn't waking himself up with his movements he would settle right down), of course.

[lilyka]

lets not over look that we are talking about five minutes of squirming and fussing. Not a hour of thrashing and wailing. its a small protest.

[PlayaMama]

Originally Posted by mamazee

As long as we're using childhood anecdotes, my mom tied me into bed for this same reason - she said I was desperately tired and needed sleep but wouldn't sleep unless I was forced to stay put. I think holding a child down in bed is better than tying a child into bed, but really they're degrees of the same thing, IMO.

i think that's pretty creepy.

how do you feel about holding and rocking a crying child?

[JL83]

Originally Posted by lilyka

lets not over look that we are talking about five minutes of squirming and fussing. Not a hour of thrashing and wailing. its a small protest.

Actually, from the OP we're talking about more like 15 minutes of hard crying.

[mamazee]

Originally Posted by PlayaMama

i think that's pretty creepy.

how do you feel about holding and rocking a crying child?

Fine, if the child is wanting to be held and rocked. I've done it lots. I haven't forced a child to sit on my lap when she didn't want to.

[KristaDJ]

Not entering the debate about whether it's right or wrong but I wanted to give you my take friend
My kids start to give up their naps around that age. It's not always permanent, sometimes they skip days and then pass out for hours, sometimes they just end up sleeping late. Sometimes they cut naps for a while then go back to them. I've seen so much variance with naps, I tend to just go with their feelings. My 13mo nurses to sleep and when I know she's tired I will nurse her and not let her get down. She fusses and then latches back on and goes to sleep. I don't feel that I'm harming her, she's really not upset. I might be able to force my 2yo to take a nap by holding her and not letting her up but frankly that's just never crossed my mind. She doesn't nap anymore, she now goes to sleep about 1.5 hours before the rest of us and sleeps as late as we do. I'd say, you are there, you SEE her and can feel how upset she is and what effect it's having on her and your lives in general. You've got good instincts, go with your gut, mama.

[Kidzaplenty]

[sisteeesmama]

I'm baaaaaaaaaack. Lol.

Anyway. I wrote a long response the other day but when I went to post it it got deleted some how. Anyway. It was REALLY long and I just didn't have the ooomph to write it again and so here I am.

I have appreciated everyone's responses and have thought a lot about what everyone has said.

This is not something I am taking lightly, for sure.

HEre are my thoughts and responses to questions others have asked.

I have tried other things, this has been the only thing that has gotten her to stop.relax(eventually).chill.sleep.
I do take her to lots of morning activities and t the park so I think she is getting enough stimulation in the morning.
I have now tried moving up her naptime to no success at all so that is a no-go.
My real concern is that as a mom I can't handle her when she gets overtired/starts acting frantic/manic is unable to be pleased and just obviously needs to go to sleep. It makes me feel stressed out and I become a worse mom. I am more prone to snap or just tune out and then the whole day becomes a wash where I am just waiting for DH to get home and not conntecting anymore with DD. It's a mess.
I strongly connect with the moms who are saying that its obvious when a baby needs a nap and to me this baby still needs her naps.

When I said in my OP that I didn't want to give them up the truth is that no, I personally don't want to give up the time where she rests.recharges.and wakes up refreshed. It is so much more peacefull than living in crazyland where she is acting like a possessed nutball.

I also connected to the pp who said that if a baby/kid didn't need a nap anymore wouldn't it stand to reason that they would be acting like they don't?

Thanks to everyone

[LilacMama]

I think you're doing a great job responding to your baby's needs. It's soooo sad as a mama to hear your baby cry, but it sounds like she's so much happier in the end if she gets the naps she needs (let's see....a few minutes of protest vs. several miserable hours at the end of the day). I really, really think you're doing the right thing.

[InMediasRes]

Sure, I did it. My DS NEVER EVER EVER could read his sleep cues. He would still stay up until forever if we didn't make him stop and go to sleep. He still fights, there's just no crying involved. A crying child doesn't necessarily NOT need sleep, they are just fighting it tooth and nail. Mine just can't seem to get his body relaxed on his own.

He gave up his naps for good around 2 and change, so around that time, we were fighting it pretty hard. I turned on some soft music, put away every single toy from sight, rocked him in a dark room, and he would still whimper a little before he drifted off. I think it was around that time that I realized that he knew what "nap" meant, so I started calling it rest time or quiet time or something, and he didn't fight quite as hard. I also found this horribly boring book (he still calls it the night-night book) and read it in the most monotone voice I could possible muster. It gave him something to take his mind off of what we were doing, but he would usually fall asleep a few pages in.

Best of luck. Giving up naps was torture for us, but hallelujah, he goes to bed at 7 w/o a fight now.

[AbbieB]

I don't want to touch the CIO/not CIO debate with a 10 foot pole.

I will chime in to say that both of my kids started to resist sleep at this age and sleep became irregular. DS is in the middle of this phase right now.

Since we allow our kids to self regulate, I see it as my job to help my kids get to sleep when they are telling me it's time. For my DS this means rubbing his eyes, asking to be held and nurse, laying on the floor, getting whiny and cranky.

Since he is in a very distractable phase too (which is probably why he resists sleep in the first place) I will bring him into the quiet, boring bedroom and lay down with him. I can no longer read or play around on my iPhone while he nurses down, it's just to distracting. Sometimes he will nurse and close his eyes and then just when the soft snoring starts, pop up and want to wrestle. Then after a few minutes of playing he nurses and falls a sleep. There are other times when he just needs the quiet rest that comes from nursing and he's good for another hour or 2. Sometimes, particularly at night, DS needs to fuss a bit before settling down to nurse. He usually goes to sleep very quickly when this happens. Unless he has been sick, he has never cried during this process. Fuss yes, but not cried.

DS no longer gets tiered and naps at predictable times. I see this as a sign that he is starting the process of dropping a daily nap. Like every thing else, the process is not a simple linear one. He still obviously needs a nap some days, and others not so much. I do my best to respect this and help him get the rest he needs without forcing the issue because I need a break (and believe me, there are days I really do...usually the days that are a no go for naps, unfortunately.)

[AutumnAir]

WRT the 'physical restraint' thing - we all physically restrain our children during the day, whether we think of it like that or not. We hold down a squirming baby to change a poopy nappy, we put a protesting child into a car seat, we hold a toddler's hand in the supermarket. We physically restrain them inside the house by using doors, windows, walls, locks, etc. We physically prevent them from playing with dangerous things using doors, locks, removing the items, etc. If our child was hurting themselves or another person we would all agree that it was our responsibility to physically prevent them from doing so.

The baby/child involved is often not best pleased with our physical restraint, but is usually better off in general - i.e. not sitting in a mass of faeces for hours on end, not dead or badly injured. Overall, healthier and happier for the 'physical restraint' despite being unimpressed and protesting vociferously at the time. I doubt there's a mama out there whose baby hasn't at some point thrown a wobbler because she's had to prevent him from doing something he wanted to do, or put him somewhere he didn't want to be.

Some children are indeed poor regulators of sleep. I was, and my DD is too. It is in fact harmful to her (and me) healthwise and safety-wise to allow her to disregard her need for sleep. Left to her own devices she would have slept for about 2 hours in 24 and screamed and cried the other 22. I know, because in my desperation to be a good parent I tried to 'follow her cues'. That's where it got us - with me so exhausted that I was really unfit to be caring for an infant and her incredibly over-wrought and over-tired, unable to function, and constantly screaming or crying. So I had to wonder: what was worse - allowing her to do this to herself, aka 'following her cues' or 'respecting her bodily integrity', or finding a more proactive way to help her to sleep when she very obviously did need to? The first meant that she literally would be screaming/crying just about non-stop for hours on end until she finally conked out of sheer exhaustion, then would wake up after 30 minutes to start all over again. The second meant that she cried in my arms, while I rocked, shushed, sang to her, gently explained to her that she needed to settle down and go to sleep, and stilled her constantly moving body. In this scenario she rarely cried for more than 10 minutes and would usually sleep for a couple of hours before waking, would wake reasonably happy and alert and play quite happily, interact normally and generally do normal baby things for an hour or two until she started to get tired again. (I'm talking now about when she was still an infant)

Kids will protest against physical restraint. They should - it's good that they test boundaries and figure things out, but we shouldn't put all the responsibility for their well-being onto them. If you could only change a baby's nappy when they happily permitted you to, well then you'd have a serious problem on your hands. An adult would recognise that although they didn't want to have their nappy changed it was a necessary evil which would overall keep them happier and healthier, but a baby can't be expected to understand that.

I don't see these things as being the equivalent of CIO at all. CIO is about meeting the parents' wants/desires at the expense of the kids' needs. CIO is about the absence of love, caring, reassurance. CIO is about breaking a kid's spirit and teaching them that no one cares what they need or want. Helping an over-tired, over-active kid to sleep by physically stopping them from moving so much they keep themselves awake is about the kid's need, not the parents'. It's about helping keep that kid healthy and happy overall, even if he's not too impressed right now.

FWIW - I had to 'physically restrain', aka lovingly hold and rock my DD to sleep for almost all of her naps and night-time sleeps for her first year, and about half of them for the next 6 months. I never left her to CIO, and she never slept more than 1-2 hours at a stretch for her entire first year, and even now at 22 months still wakes 3-4 times a night. But she has gradually stopped fighting sleep so much - she'll now tell me she wants to go to bed. She enjoys the snuggling and closeness, and often now when she gets really wiggly and can't settle she'll actually *ask* me to rock her to sleep and even though she wiggles while I rock her she wants me to help her to sleep, and will often be out within a couple of minutes of rocking. I think for a kid who has a lot of difficulty self-regulating, switching off and stopping moving to go to sleep, she's now got a healthy attitude towards it. She knows she needs sleep, and she recognises when she needs help to get to sleep.

I also don't think naps are about a parent's convenience - my life would actually be a lot easier if I didn't need to get home for a few hours in the middle of every day. (DD can't sleep for more than a few minutes out and about, so we need to be home for nap-time)

OP - only you can know for sure about your DD. You know best if she's really trying to drop naps and if you need to try to facilitate that for her, or if she's just fighting sleep and really needs the help to sleep. Given that you said that she used to go to sleep just fine, and has now started to to fight sleep I would guess that she's getting ready to transition out of her nap (as opposed to those kids who fight sleep all their lives as a matter of course). My personal inclination would be to try out no naps for a week or two and if it really wasn't working then to re-evaluate what could be done at that stage, but like I said I don't know your situation or your DD, so you're the best judge of that.

[riverscout]

I'm all for trying to facilitate sleep for an exhausted kid, but I wouldn't be comfortable holding a nearly 2 year old still who wanted to get down. It just seems like there has to be some kind of more agreeable solution.

What has worked well for my kids is routine, routine, routine and a consistent schedule. This has worked especially well for my daughter. My son is a bit more challenging, but we're making progress.

ETA - In regards to crying, I think there is a big difference in a crying infant who is having a hard time transitioning to sleep and a nearly 2 year old who is crying and mad because she wants to get down and doesn't want to take a nap. The children are at completely different developmental stages and shouldn't be treated the same IMO.

[Mom2Ian]

I haven't read all of the replies, but I have a (almost) 20 month old son who still takes one nap in the afternoon. He sleeps in a crib (his choice - he has always slept better in there and likes it) and if I know he's tired but having some trouble winding down I will put him in there with some books or a few toys to play with in addition to his bottle. He usually "reads" to himself or plays for a little while (10 minutes or less) and then lays down when he's ready and falls asleep. He usually doesn't cry, but if he does, (of course) I go in to see what's wrong. Usually he will want more milk, need a diaper change or want a toy that he accidentally dropped. Once I've fixed whatever it is, he goes to sleep. Occasionally he just wants some attention and then we play pattycake or sing a song or something and then he goes right out. He seems to need that 10 minute "wind down" period. I figure it is the same as me - I always go to bed when I'm tired but read for about 10 minutes or use my laptop.

[ssh]

Originally Posted by sisteeesmama

I also connected to the pp who said that if a baby/kid didn't need a nap anymore wouldn't it stand to reason that they would be acting like they don't?

There is a transition period where the child still needs to rest during the middle of the day but has trouble going to sleep because they are ready to give up their nap. It doesn't matter at what age your child gives up their nap you're going to have an over tired child for a few weeks while their body adjusts.

We've always let our DD regulate her own sleep. When she was getting ready to drop her nap the amount of time she was awake between sleep periods kept increasing. When she had to be up for 8 hours before she could go to sleep we dropped the naps because there is just not 28 hours in a day. For several weeks our DD was grumpy and tantrumy and sometimes hyper during those last 2 or 3 hours before bed. Then she'd sleep 11 or 12 hours.