Nap Time Struggles? Try a Reset.

Let’s talk about those naps that just don’t want to happen. You know the ones. You’ve been holding your toddler or watching them on the monitor for nearly an hour. You know they are exhausted, but they don’t want to sleep. Maybe you’ve tried one or two times to get them down. They are laying there staring at the ceiling.

I watched this happen a few times with my very first family. Specifically, the toddler. After three or four times I decided I would try a reset. Rather than watch them struggle, or struggle myself, to get them to all asleep. I get them out of the crib, take off the sleep sack, remove the pacifier and set a timer for 15 minutes.

In those 15 minutes we would play in the playroom, maybe eat a snack, sometimes go outside, and run around. The point is to get their body back to a pre-nap state. Once the timer goes off, I bring them back to their room and begin nap time routine from the beginning. I change their diaper, turn on the sound machine, talk about the things we had done that day and what my favorite thing was (today was building a fort and playing doctor to superheroes) the shades are closed and we get the sleep sack back on.

From there I stand by the crib and sway while singing whatever that child’s sleep song is. I try and use a different one for each child I care for. That way it’s their song. When the song is done, I put them in their crib. I will confess to occasionally being so tired that I just snuggle them in the rocking chair and let them sleep on me.

The reset is twofold. It gets them out of their crib and moving if they have extra energy that they didn’t get to expel earlier. It also allows me to bring my own cortisol levels down. The exhaustion of fighting a child to sleep can cause bad decisions. Rather than allow myself to get anywhere close to those bad decisions, I do a reset for both of us.

I relied on the reset method today. Little Bear was clearly tired, but his room was overheating (the house has a wonky heating system that my bosses are working on) I brought him and his sound machine into the guestroom in an attempt to get him to fall asleep It didn’t work, so reset it was. All of fifteen minutes later he was cooled down and so was his room. Up we went, I left the door ajar and got him ready to sleep. He was out like a light in 4 minutes. I made the choice to contact nap, partly because I was tired but also because I really am going to miss snuggling him when I move o to a new family.

There you have it, the reset method. Even with the extra time it took to fall asleep, Little Bear got a solid hour of sleep before he had to be awake if he was going to sleep tonight. Next time you are going crazy trying to get your toddler to sleep, try the reset method.