What's a mom to do? My two year old will go upstairs, read a book, rock and climb into bed at nap time, but she doesn't go to sleep. She'll climb out of bed, grab a book and climb back in. You can hear her read her books, which is just too cute for me. Then, it will get quiet and I will think aha, finally, sleep. Only to be followed a few minutes later with a crash. Something has fallen, I being the worried mom of course head upstairs to see what happened. She's sitting on her floor playing with something and looks up at me and says, I woke up! I try to explain that in order to wake up, you must first go to sleep. When I suggest we rock or climb into bed, she'll tell me "I'm done".
I find myself running errands some days, just because I know that 5 minutes in the car will put her to sleep and if I hang out in the car for a while, she will at least get some semblance of a nap. To me, the fact that she falls asleep in the car means that she is still needing a nap - she's just not able to resist it there.
They tell me a similar tale at school, it takes her about 45 minutes to fall asleep at nap time. Of course there, she has no choice but to lie on her cot until she ultimately gives in. All the kids are doing it.
With my son, we eventually had to stop calling it a nap, he simply didn't want to nap. We would call it time to recharge. This worked. We always said, you don't have to sleep, just recharge. Invariably, he would fall asleep 5 - 10 minutes later.
How do you get your reluctant kid to stay in bed long enough to fall asleep? I don't want to stay in her room with her and rock her or pat her bottom long enough for her to fall asleep, but I'm starting to think that is my only option.
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