Naptime strategies

Yesterday afternoon I heard a quiet tap tap tap coming from the other side of Isaac's bedroom door.

"Do you mind helping me with this door?" Isaac called politely. "My hands are full."

He sounded perfectly reasonable. However, it was naptime, and I had purposefully latched Isaac's bedroom door because he had refused to stay in the room and fall asleep. For the previous five minutes he had been rattling the doorknob, banging on the door, and loudly pleading "Mama, mama, mama." I had ignored these vigorous complaints with ease, but I couldn't resist his sudden change in strategy. I liked his polite pretense that he was just an ordinary guy who needed a hand with the door.

When I opened the door I saw that his hands were full, too. He was holding a large book horizontally, and carefully balanced on top of it were a stuffed horse, a pair of shoes, and a pair of socks. "I just need to go and take care of a few things," he said as he desperately tried to squeeze past me into the hallway. I tried not to laugh.

However entertaining I found it, his clever strategy did not allow him to avoid the nap. I put him back to bed and lay down with him, ignoring his demands that I leave the room, and finally, finally, 50 minutes after we had started the naptime process, he fell asleep.

- - - - -

It may not sound like it, but we've actually been having success with the reinstated nap. After Isaac gave up dependably nursing to sleep at naptime sometime in early April, I despaired of his ever napping again. It seemed unlikely that a nearly three-year-old child could learn to nap on his own. And, to be honest, he didn't -- yes, for the last two months he has napped with wonderful regularity, but only because I always lay down next to him as he fell asleep.

But yesterday's experience has driven me to take the next step -- effective last night, I'm leaving the room before Isaac falls asleep. Before you congratulate me, let me admit that the only reason I'm daring to tamper with a good thing is because it has stopped working. It has been taking longer and longer for Isaac to fall asleep when I'm in the room with him, whether I'm lying in bed next to him or sitting in the chair. He talks to me, tries to get me to interact with him, and, if he doesn't fall asleep within 30 minutes or so, eventually demands that I leave the room. If I do leave, then he jumps out of bed, opens the door, and tries to leave too. So then I have to go back into his room, and go right back to square one.

So last night I wasn't surprised when, after I put him to bed and left the room, he immediately got up, opened the door, and ran down the hall. I caught him and returned him to his room. He got up, opened the door, and ran out again. I know that all the sleep-advice books say to keep repeating this sequence up to 50 times if necessary, but after just five or six times it was clear that Isaac was treating it as a fabulous game. The constant opening and closing of the bedroom door, especially combined with the mad dash for freedom, was way too exciting.

So I got a chair and a book, and parked myself in the hallway outside his open bedroom door. When he leaped out of bed and saw me sitting there, he stopped in his tracks.

I'm not saying sitting in the hall guarding the open bedroom door is a perfect solution. But it does remove some of the drama (and trauma?) of a closed bedroom door, so it seems like a good transitional step. And because of the layout of Isaac's room, the hallway is out of his line of sight, so my presence won't be as distracting.

So far I've tried this strategy three times, for two bedtimes and a nap. I'll give you a full progress report in a week!