Nanny quit because my kids don’t take naps

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here,

Both twins dropped morning and daytime nap at 11 months old. I can’t force them to nap period. Bedtime is 7pm to 8am every day except Sunday. Our nanny is older, a previous preschool teacher, and the boys loved her. I feel bad that she was unable to continue caring for them.

I need to hire a new nanny asap. Do I lie and not mention, the boys don’t take naps or just be 100% honest?

OP, as everyone else is saying, it is highly unusual for toddlers to drop the nap so early. It may have seemed as though the children were dropping the nap, but sometimes it’s just a phase fighting sleep and you need to power through/get creative to support getting them to sleep. You can’t just expect that every child will fall asleep easily and if they don’t, that they aren’t tired. I was a SAHM to twins and my kids were terrible nappers. But supervising twins that age is incredibly physical and taxing. I needed to rest during their never long enough nap time. I couldn’t do laundry or cook or anything. You can’t take your eyes off of them when they are awake, and the physical aspects of lifting, sitting on the floor, pushing the double stroller, etc etc are very demanding. I was 30 years old, so I can only imagine how taxing it would be on an older nanny. I would make a concerted effort to reinstate the nap not only for the caregiver but for the children and their brain development.

+1

The fact that you're throwing up your hands "oh, they dropped their naps, nothing I could do" tells me that you're the problem. When an 11 month old stops napping, you troubleshoot, aggressively, because 11 month olds need not one but TWO naps. You don't just throw up your hands. You extend wake windows, you check your sleep hygiene (black out curtains? Noise machine? Calming bedtime routine? How's the room temperature?), you do some CIO if necessary. You separate them if they're in the same room and keeping each other up. You fight through a sleep regression, even if naps are crap/non-existent for a few weeks, until you get to the other side. This is on you.

[Anonymous]

No nap at 20 months is unusual, but 13 hours total sleep a day is well within the CDC recommendation of 11-14 hours for 1-2 year olds. Unfortunately I can understand why a nanny dislikes that (and frankly as a parent I wouldn’t like it either since I’d barely see them awake on a weekday). I don’t know if you can change it at this point. You need to disclose it and give a new nanny some leeway, whether to try to implement a nap or enforce quiet time. Possible the old nanny was inexperienced and didn’t know how to deal with nap issues either, but that’s water under the bridge if she’s already quit.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Naps-in-children%3A-6-months-7-years.-Weissbluth/4932c9e0cedf5239135134dd9113fed7ed2a08f8
https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.htm