Back from reading the link and taking your nap? Then you must be a toddler or retired. Parents of toddlers and those of us working until we fall out of the chair or our fingers fall off do not get to take naps.
We are told naps for toddlers are essential to their development. Just as daytime sleep is necessary for kittens to become cats and puppies to become dogs. Who then continue to sleep a lot in the day, anyway, so what’s the point?
The point is, kittens and puppies don’t go from babyhood to toddlerhood. They go straight to adulthood. And we adult humans can only long to sleep the way dogs and cats sleep. Or like napping toddlers. Especially while we’re raising a toddler.
While it is true that naps lead to better brain and body development for newborns and pre-toddlers, by the time a kid can toddle there is no excuse for letting them nap.
Their busy brains and busy fingers can develop just as fast with a true, long night’s sleep. From which you, the parent, also benefit.
So why do toddlers nap? More to the point, why do we make or let them nap?
So parents can fool themselves into thinking they can get a full day’s work in — on top of doing five loads of muddy, food-stained laundry, meal prep, pet care of the sleeping dogs and cats who they wake up to feed, walk or bathe, and basic house cleaning such as directing the dog and cat to eat the detritus under the toddler’s high chair — during the kid’s nap. They can’t.
All they accomplish is a bare minimum of one or two of those things, with the result that they are not rested, but the toddler is.
How can that be good for anybody?
A rested toddler during the day is a dangerous toddler. A dangerous toddler, racing around “exploring” their world by demolishing it one torn-up book and broken vase at a time, rubbing food into the dog’s fur, chasing the cat into a nervous breakdown, trying to take bites of dirty shoes like they saw the dog do, and generally wreaking havoc.
Add dangerous rested toddler to sleep-deprived adult, and the possibilities of disaster are innumerable. I dare you. Try to number them.
I can’t. Because I was so sleep deprived during my son’s toddlerhood that all the bad memories are washed from my mind. It’s almost as if he knew what he was doing. If I keep mommy awake long enough, she’ll forget the destruction.
Toddlers who nap are displaying true brain-washing terrorism techniques. Deprive the adult of enough sleep while you get plenty and they’ll let you do anything you want. Then they’ll forget you did it.
Need proof? I can’t remember a single horrible thing my son did when he was a toddler. I only remember the adorable things.
Like waking me up in the middle of the night by standing next to my bed until I opened my eyes, then handing me things one at a time, saying,
“Here’s my book, here’s my truck, here’s my blanky, here’s my ‘sleeping guy’ and — with empty arms spread wide — Here’s Me!”
With entertainment like that in the middle of the night, I let him get away with napping during the day.
The result now that he’s grown?
He has a very high IQ, and I am to this day, irrevocably tired.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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