Bringing back “quiet time”
Let’s be real - when your child stops napping it can bring up a whole bunch of emotions: bittersweet happiness that your toddler is growing up, but also hair-pulling frustration that you, the parent, have lost your mid-day break. I’m supposed to entertain and attend to my child for an entire day without pause?? It can be a truly overwhelming change.
Well I am here to share a not-so-secret solution to the dropped nap - quiet time! Just because your child no longer requires a daily nap, doesn’t mean your child can go-go-go all day without a break. Young children greatly benefit from some down time in the afternoon to rest their bodies and minds. And their caregivers absolutely benefit from that mid-day break too!
So how do you incorporate quiet time into your day? Quiet time should happen in your child’s room and should start when the nap used to occur - usually right after lunch. Your child is already used to this break in the schedule and, if you’re in that just-dropped-a-nap-but-sometimes-they-really-still-need-a-little-nap phase, your child might actually fall asleep for a bit. That is ok!
For quiet time I recommend quiet toys like dolls, stuffed animals, little figurines, blocks, trains, duplos, stickers and paper, and piles of books to look through. No electronics! Quiet time is a great time to foster creativity and imagination. When my eldest started quiet time I would spread a special blanket out on her floor and put different “stations” around the blanket - a small stack of books, a no-mess art activity like stickers or color-wonder markers and paper, an imaginative play activity like her doctor’s kit, and one other activity she was interested in at the time, as well as a few of her stuffed animals. Laying out these choices was really helpful for her.
I recommend quiet toys like dolls, stuffed animals, little figurines, blocks, trains, duplos, stickers and paper, and piles of books to look through. No electronics!
If your child is already great at playing solo, then quiet time may be a huge success from day 1. But, if your child is attached at your hip and needs some coaxing to play independently (like mine), then I recommend introducing it gradually. You can tell your child “You’ve grown so big you don’t need to nap anymore! Instead, big kids have special quiet time in their room and you can play with your toys.” Explain that you are going to be around the house, and you will come back shortly when quiet time is over. Then set a timer. Day 1 can be 10 minutes. After 10 minutes go back to your child’s room and celebrate the first successful quiet time! Even if your child is happily playing when you return, I recommend ending quiet time when you come back in. Why? Because you want your child to learn that quiet time ends when YOU say it does, not when they’ve decided they’re done. You can increase the time each day (or every two days) by 5 or 10 minutes until you reach your desired quiet time. An hour is a great goal, and once you hit that you might find your child plays well through that hour! Or, like my youngest, 60 minutes may be all that she’s capable of, and that’s fine too.
I first learned about “quiet time” from my mother-in-law, who loves to regale me with stories about my husband when he was a tot. She tells me how she would save some of his favorite toys, and then bring them out just for quiet time when she would let him play with them for “as long as he wanted” in his room. What a treat!
You can incorporate quiet time at any age, even if your child dropped the nap long ago. My daughter is 7 now, and she loves when I say “it’s quiet time!” She goes right to her room and entertains herself while this mama gets a few minutes to make dinner in silence…or write a blog post!
