My daughter has been attending daycare since she was 6 months old and I returned to work full time. In March I changed her to a new daycare center, which unfortunately in a lot of ways has not lived up to my expectations, but overall is adequate for my daughter’s needs. The biggest problem right now is sleep. I’ve asked the daycare to limit her naps to under 2hrs otherwise she is up past 10pm at night, tired and cranky in the mornings, etc. I limit her to an hour on weekends, which works well. They agreed to do this a few weeks ago but haven’t stuck to it. At pick up today they told me she was really tired this morning so they put her down to nap at 10am (usually nap time is 11.30am to 12pm). She woke up after 1pm. As soon as they told me I wanted to cry in frustration as she’ll likely be up to midnight now and I’d like to start going to bed earlier myself. What can I do? Is it my fault for not being able to get her to sleep at night? They’ve recommended a sleep consultant but will that help at all?

Nope - they need to wake her up as you requested IMO. It’s perfectly normal for toddlers of this age to stay up late at night if they get too much sleep in the day. Unfortunately I think they’re not really ‘allowed’ to wake kids up under the NQF so they might be in a hard place. Good caters we have had in the past make a lot of noise around the end of a sleep cycle and what do you know the kid wakes up haha. Sort of playing around the rules. My eldest was dropping sleeps by 2 ish so an hour seems plenty.

Just make sure that they are not fudging your sleep times!! Im waiting for the train home, but know many that will, they’ll be oppps the chil is asleep or slept to long, can’t wake them up now. Also ask to see their sleep policy.

I think if waking her up requires a lot of noise and movement or lifting her up while she’s still asleep then it’s probably not something any child care worker would really be permitted to do. I’m no expert but I think body autonomy with toddlers is considered quite important in child care. I think if your mum couldn’t get her to wake up then the staff at the day care centre have zero chance to be honest. I appreciate the challenge though, my toddlers were night-owls too.

Ask them to see their nap policy. I have no idea if this is standard but our childcare has a written policy. I don’t entirely like it but they do at least wake her when I say. They also love saying “its against our policy” when I ask them to do something different to what they do. Erm well rewrite it then! DD1 is 5, and yet they still have them all lie down for quiet time and sometimes she drifts off. Even a short nap at that age plays havoc with bedtime. Unfortunately, preventing them from sleep is against their policy.

Dawn I’m not sure, at some stage she will reduce her day naps and ultimately stop them altogether and then things get simpler but you’re in the middle of a very tricky stage. One of my kids refused naps altogether from about 18 months but she’d be wrecked by about 5pm and would turn into an enraged nightmare. Lucky she was so cute really.

Its so hard. Its effecting my sleep as well and I need to be able to focus for work. Only thing I can think of is to start waking her earlier so she’s tired at night, but still requires me to be awake… Times like this I wish I had someone to share the load.

Dawn Honestly I can’t imagine how you manage all of it alone, I really respect your patience and how hard you obviously work to keep everything running smoothly. I’m sure your daughter will appreciate it in twenty or so years 😄

[unknown] I feel for you, it’s a hard one. The comments I would hear at work about parents who don’t want their children to sleep and how some carers act. I could never say anything though being “just a casual”.

Childcare & naptime

Dawn

My daughter has been attending daycare since she was 6 months old and I returned to work full time. ...