Milestones: Don't Knock It 'Til You Try It: The Family Nap

Every afternoon around two o'clock, I announce to my children, "Okay, rest time!"

I lug my one-year-old daughter onto the "big bed," as we call it, crawl up and among the pillows, turn over on my side, and nestle her in tight. My four-year-old son hoists himself up on the bed behind me and cuddles up against my back.

Yes, I know it's scandalous, but my children and I take a nap together, all three of us, every afternoon, for about an hour and a half.

Allow me the opportunity to defend myself.

In all honesty, naptime is the very best time of day for me. As we rest, the late afternoon sun peeks softly through the drawn blinds. The covers are ample and soft. The cat curls by my feet. My daughter's body is a bundle of warmth and relaxation in my arms, and my son speaks to me sweetly before he drifts off to sleep. "I love you, Mommy," he whispers several times in a half-asleep stupor.

For a while, I'm still awake while my children doze. I begin to notice how beautiful my children are: my daughter's impossibly pink lips, my son's already masculine brow. I feel myself slipping subtly into a state of peaceful awareness of how thankful I am for the blessing that is my children, something that's difficult to do when I frequently find them in the corner of the living room with fistfuls of Vaseline.

Before long, their breathing regulates and the rhythm lulls me to sleep, too.

I can already hear the skeptics. Yes, I'm fully aware that I have dishes to wash and floors to mop and laundry to do and the list goes on and on.

Or the other faction of skeptics: you actually NAP with your children? Doesn't that teach them to NEED you to fall asleep? Doesn't it feel strange?

You know what? I don't care. I absolutely cannot convince myself, no matter how much I try, that a clean floor is an even exchange for an hour of rest and reconnection with my children. Rested children are happy children. A rested mother is a better mother.

Furthermore, naptimes are precious times of deep physical connection with my children. I cuddle them, touch them, and provide them with positive sleep associations, which I firmly believe set them up for a lifetime of healthy sleeping.

I began this routine out of necessity. My son was a newborn cat-napper who demanded to nurse at all times. If I didn't sleep when he slept, I wouldn't get more than three hours of sleep each night. As he grew, we kept our naptimes together. He seemed to crave them, as did I.

Before my daughter was born, I occasionally forfeited this time in order to meet friends or take appointments. But I found that I became more easily depressed and irritable and my son turned crabby and clingy.

That was back when I saw our naps as something I was doing for purely selfish reasons. Carving out time in the day for myself and demanding that my child comply! How could I?!

But now I've come to see sleep as something I enjoy and something that is essential to the order of my household, something that keeps my kids from coming unglued. And now I plan our day around naptime, and I almost always partake myself.

If you're open to it, I encourage you to try a family naptime. Each afternoon, take your kids and plop them in bed with you. Give everyone ample time to adjust to the new routine. By seven-days'-time, you'll all be happy as a pile of puppies. Just like us.


About the Author: Connie Colwell Miller is a freelance writer, editor, and poet. She holds a degree in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she now teaches part-time. She and her husband, Jason, spend their free time chasing after their free-spirited son, Miles.