Naps, Revisited

Man, this nap thing is really wearing me out. I don’t know what the story is… my child can fight me on a nap so effectively, even when I can see that he’s all droopy-eyed in the car. Or at lunch. Or whatever. Here’s what usually happens. We’re in the car, I’m driving around trying to stall long enough for him to fall asleep (though he hasn’t been letting me do that the last few days… he comes all unglued if I vary from the most direct route home, at which point it’s useless since he won’t fall asleep if he’s screaming). He’ll be looking like he’s about 1 minute from dropping off, then something will catch his eye. His head pops up and his eyes go wide open and he’s chattering away about whatever it was. Oy. You can’t imagine how that pains me when it happens. I want to just pull the car over and have a good cry.

I may have said this before, but my inability to get my child to nap is my single most challenging issue right now. It quite literally drives me to tears (often) and makes me feel like I am failing my child. I know, there are much worse things that could happen. I think it’s just because I am trying (or have tried) everything I can think of or have read about and it doesn’t work. I just keep thinking that I want him to learn how to develop good sleep habits at an early age so he doesn’t struggle with insomnia or anything later.

And I suppose I should come clean now, since I’m totally whining about this. I have terrible sleep habits myself, and it is quite clear that Wee Laddie has gotten this sleep thing from me. My problem is that there is so much that I want to get done (not that I’m exactly busting my butt all day long) and I hate to miss out on anything, so I have tried & tried to get my body to adapt to not needing that much sleep. Does it work? Nope. I just eventually get so tired that I have to go to bed super-early, or… you know, take a nap. I strongly suspect this is exactly the issue for Wee Laddie… and maybe that’s why it drives me so crazy.

And now I think I’ll take a break from whining about naps for a while. Really.