When my son was 2, he was always a great sleeper. Usually 2-3 hours during the day. Then 12 hours straight through the night.
However, a friend of mine told me that her 4 year old daughter “grew out” of her midday naps and she suggested I should
introduce “quiet playtime”
before my children reached that age.
Basically it’s to teach children how to play quietly and independently for a certain amount of time that you set.
I thought the advice was gold, so here’s my experience.
Bit of Background
My son was 2. I think he was going through his Terrible Two’s stage, and he was particularly rebellious and very VERY difficult to put to sleep during the day.
Explain the Rules
When I first introduced the concept, I put my son in his room and gave him two choices. 1) Either lie in bed quietly and close his eyes, or 2) play in his room quietly. He usually chose to play quietly.
So I gave him some further rules like, no shouting, no throwing things, destroying things, no drawing on the walls, no shouting for mummy, no coming out of the room until time is up. I also explained that I would leave the door ajar.
Give Starting Points for the Playtime
Then I suggested things for him to do. Books, puzzles, toys, drawing, colouring in, lego, train set, cars, stickers, blocks.
Or build a city for his cars, go on a space adventure, look for lizards in the [pretend] forest under his bed, make me dinner with the kitchen set, have a picnic with your teddy bears.
Timekeeping
My aim was to make his “quiet playtime” an hour long, with a break at 30 minutes.
Initially I kept an eye on him every 10 minutes.
If at 30 minutes I notice he was a little lonely and bored, I’d come into the room and introduce a new toy, or a new activity or snack, and leave again.
I often thought about setting an alarm clock to ring in an hour. To also help him learn how to keep track of time. But I never had to use it.
Sometimes I peeked into his room and found that he was sound asleep on his bed!
Success!
I think it took me about 4 days to get him at the stage where he was actually looking forward to his quiet playtime.
In the end, if given the chance, Callum can have quiet playtime for 1.5 hours.
Things I discovered –
- I’ve found that my son’s concentration is more focused whenever he is doing something by himself.
- He has a bigger attention span when doing a task.
- When asked about what he did, he constantly amazes me (and frightens me) with his vivid and creative imagination.
- I like to think he’s more confident in his abilities to do things by himself, but that hasn’t quite been proven yet.
- Sometimes he would put himself into quiet playtime, run into his room, tell me to “stay in the kitchen and cook dinner” and shut the door on me! Hmph!
Struggles
I’d be lying if I said it was easy!
- When he was particularly moody, he would cry, shout and scream for me and beg me to play with him. Or purposely throw things out the door or destroy things just to get my attention. In these instances I enforced “time out” using his bed as the “time out” area with the addition that he had to close his eyes too. (Most times I come back 2 minutes later and find him fast asleep!)
- Sometimes I felt so guilty! I would find him lying on the floor, talking to the tassels on the rug. And I think he might be bored or sad or lonely or abandoned.
- Probably not a good idea to introduce this new routine while other new things are happening in your child’s life eg. New sibling, starting daycare, starting potty training etc.
Oh the Irony of it All
My son is 3 years now. And even though I taught him how to be in quiet playtime at an early age, he still shows absolutely NO sign of wanting to give up his midday nap.
Nonetheless, I think being able to play without adult supervision is one of the best skills I’ve taught him so far!
(April 2006) (
