This summer marks the first summer that Harrison is no longer napping. He’s 5 and will start kindergarten in August. I noticed that while his nap during the day was great, it started taking him so much longer at night to fall asleep. When it took him an hour one night to fall asleep, I decided that we needed to ditch the nap. I had tried ditching it last summer (or rather napping some days and not napping other days), but that lasted maybe one day because I realized he still needed a nap last summer.
I know that nap time is highly valuable to a mother. It’s probably the only time during the day that we get to pick up the house, do dishes, get caught up on laundry, make important phone calls, or even work out. Something that I heard before I became a mother was the term “quiet rest time.” I remember listening to a Sally Clarkson podcast while working out one day and she talked about her children having a quiet rest time each day. I held onto that idea for when it was time to employ that in our home.
Quiet rest time for Harrison happens after lunch when Banks goes down for his nap. We have a few rules for quiet rest time:
-he has to stay upstairs in the playroom or tv room until I tell him his quiet rest time is over
-he may watch tv if he hasn’t watched a lot of tv already that day
-if he does get to watch tv, it has to be on his Disney+ watchlist and I have to turn on the tv for him (this is the only time he watches tv unsupervised which is why he’s only allowed to watch what’s on the approved watchlist that I put on for him)
-he has to clean up the playroom before he comes downstairs when quiet rest time is over
I think having quiet rest time is wonderful for when kids are out of the nap stage. It teaches them to entertain themselves and to be self-reliant. And when Harrison is able to read, he’ll also be required to read before he can play 🙂 Quiet rest time will still remain a solo time during the day when Banks and even Merritt are old enough to ditch the nap. Everyone gets a break in the middle of the day-even Mom 🙂
This is not something that I grew up doing, but it’s something that we will always do in our home!
We did the same thing for both of our kids and it is a sanity saver for sure! As a matter of fact, we still all do quiet rest time every afternoon unintentionally even though they’re older. That’s when they get their screen time and it gives me time to work without them yelling and running around distracting me!
I love that! We will definitely carry this into the older kid years for sure 😂😂😂
This is such a great idea. My kids definitely had a quiet time for many years, even into elementary school during the summer. And Sally Clarkson is the best!
Sally really is the best!
Great blog post! My mom was a teacher before she had kids and growing up we(myself and two siblings) had “quiet rest time” for sure.
For me(the oldest), I remember it was during my elementary school years and “after lunch”. Totally agree with you: “It teaches them to entertain themselves and to be self-reliant”.
I think too many parents today feel like they need to constantly entertain their kids and they don’t!