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Storm is three and a half (end of October birthday) and I know there's the
possibility he's "growing out of" naps, but I'm not sure how gradual that is.
If he would skip a nap for a day when he was younger, it was *very* hard for
him to get back into the routine of napping, now not so much. Often, he'll nap
in the car later than he would nap at home if we're out at nap time. At home
I nap with him 99% of the time, occasionally, I'll lay with him until he
falls asleep then come downstairs. Very rarely, he isn't interested in napping
and I'm exhausted, and I'll nap while he stays up. We don't even call it
napping, we call it "relax time" or more often "playing video games", since we
take our handheld games (Gameboy DS) and play side by side lying down until one
or both of us is tired, then we usually leave one of them open and running
for Storm to have light.

Today, Storm took his Gameboy and went upstairs himself. In the 5 minutes or
so he was up there, while I was pondering this new development and gloating
to myself about how trust and freedom is the way to go, I was finishing up
something on the computer before I was going to head up with him. Well, just as
I was finishing, he came down and took my hand and asked me to come with him,
took me upstairs and was showing me some of the things that were the same on
2 Gameboy game boxes that were laid side-by-side on the bed. He started
playing one of them and I ducked into the bathroom for a moment before I joined
him. When I came back in, he was still standing beside the bed playing and
after asking him to get up in the bed and he didn't respond, I figured he was
just concentrating, so I picked him up and laid him on the bed. (Okay, now I'm
seeing that I shouldn't have done that.) He protested that he didn't want to
sleep and I said I had needed him out of the way to get into bed. He said he
wanted to go downstairs and I said that I loved playing video games with him
and couldn't we do that. He said no, he wanted to go downstairs. I said I was
disappointed and that I had really wanted to play with him. He said he
didn't want to sleep. I told him he didn't have to sleep, he could just play games
next to me. Storm is often most adamant about avoiding lying down or getting
comfortable when he is the most sleepy. He started to get off the bed and
said he wanted to go downstairs and I said firmly but gently, "No, lay down
here with me for a while. We'll go downstairs later." He reluctantly climbed
back up beside me and lay down, then whined a bit and I said he sounded kind of
like a doggy whining and asked him if he'd ever heard a dog whine. Then I
played with him a bit, pretending to be a dog snuffling at him and whining, then
a soft bark. After about 5 minutes of him giggling and asking me to do it
again, he acted like a doggy for a bit and then settled down to play his game.
Eventually, he fell asleep and when he woke, he showed no signs of his
earlier upset/disapointment and even pretended to be a dog and curled up with me
for a while before he went downstairs.

It seems like a happy ending, but I'm unsure if rare occurrences like these
are going to affect how he feels about sleeping or his ability to listen to
his body and know when he's tired. We've tried repeatedly (at night, not
naptime) to let him fall asleep wherever (downstairs), but he just doesn't fall
asleep. He's a very light sleeper and anything keeps him awake, so even all the
rest of the family being quiet around him and the t.v. so low it's barely
able to be heard keep him awake. Three to four hours past when he normally falls
asleep, and at that point, he's been so horribly cranky and beside himself
that we've taken him up where he's fallen asleep within 5 minutes. So, I'm
feeling uncertain. I'm not sure what else I could have done instead (besides not
picking him up and placing him on the bed-I'll remember that next time), and
this was one of those days where it was clear he needed some rest. Truly, I
didn't care if he fell asleep or just laid quietly for a while, but I was
pretty sure he *would* fall asleep if he was quiet a bit.

Am I still not trusting him enough and deciding what's best for him myself?
Do I just need some new techniques and ideas? Is an incident like this rare
enough that it doesn't matter? I'm just not sure, but I'd like some input.

Peace,
De



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pamela Sorooshian

I had that kind of experience with Rosie (my now-17 yo) for a while. I
used to do pretty much the same thing - try to find some way of
getting her off alone and into a reclining position. She'd resist
because she knew she was going to fall asleep and didn't want to miss
anything. I'd try different things - the best was to get her to let me
read to her in bed. Sometimes it was watching a video.

Now she does it to herself - when she knows she needs to sleep to feel
her best, but she has the urge to push herself longer and stay awake,
she'll watch a movie or a tv series on dvd. Goes right off to sleep.
Her tv has a sleep timer - she sets it for 15 minutes and almost never
is awake when it goes off.

-pam




On Jul 21, 2008, at 2:05 PM, Sanguinegirl83@... wrote:

> . Truly, I
> didn't care if he fell asleep or just laid quietly for a while, but
> I was
> pretty sure he *would* fall asleep if he was quiet a bit.