Limiting child/babies naps?

Question

I’m a nanny for a 2 year old and a 7 month old. The parents are very strict on the kids naps because they want them to sleep at night for them. The 2 year old can only take a one hour nap and then I HAVE to wake her up. The 7 month old is only allowed 3 half-hour naps a day. I can’t let him sleep past then and if he’s tired I have to force him to stay awake. I ALWAYS do whatever parents ask of me because it’s their child. But this seems a little wrong and selfish to me especially with the baby. He gets so over tired and crabby. And the 2 year old is so pooped out from running at the park or wherever all day that I have to force her awake and she cries.  I understand them wanting the kids to sleep at night but is this a little overboard? Opinions?

Answer

I don't think it's healthy to wake up a sleeping child repeatedly, they need that time to grow. My 3 year old has about a 3 hour nap every day then goes to bed around 8.

Answer

That sounds ridiculous to me. I’ve never woken my daughter up and she always sleeps well at night. Sometimes she can nap from 4pm to 7pm and her bedtime routine starts at 8 and I still put her to bed at 8:30 latest. She might not sleep immediately, but she’ll stay in her cot ‘talking to herself’ for about 30 mins to an hour then falls asleep. I think waking sleeping babies is cruel.

Answer

Goodness! No wonder we have those who suffer from "affluenza." They're fucked up from the start. Babies now what the need. This is sad.

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I have been a nanny for a while and I have had a few family do this. Usually it has the opposite effect and the kids don't sleep well at night because they are over tired. Also when I babysit sometimes on weekend evening the parents don't wake them, and they sleep until they are ready to be up, because the parents don't want overly tired cranky kids. 
Some kids, do go to sleep better a night if their naps are adjusted so they are up longer before bedtime, such as gradually moving a nap earlier, like from 3:00-4:30pm to 2:00 to 3:30.

Answer

I was a nanny for years and had these types of issues with some families too. But I agree that it’s not great to be limiting their naps like that. I also worked in daycares and our nap times for ages 1-5 were 2 or 2.5 hours long. Some kids slept the whole time and others woke earlier than that. Kids are growing so much at that age. I’m sure they’d still sleep at night even with naps. My daughters 4 months old. She takes two 1.5-2 hour naps a day and one or two 30-45 minute naps. She still sleeps completely through the night 9pm to 8am 🤷🏻‍♀️ haha if they’re tired, they’ll sleep.

Answer

this is absolutely crazy! children need sleep, that's when they rebuild, grow, refresh and solidify knowledge learned.. aka convert them from short term memory to long term memory! waking them up repeatedly or not allowing them to sleep disrupts this process and in my honest opinion if the parents wanted sleep at night.. they shouldn't have had children. how incredibly ignorant and selfish of them. this really upsets me. my baby girl (13 months old) sleeps as long as she needs during her nap and wakes up as much as she needs at night and as early as her body tells her to wake up. that's how it is with kids, I knew that going in and accepted it. I do try to keep her to a somewhat schedule and for the most part.. it works.. but it isn't perfect and we adjust as needed. shame on then!

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I've heard of this and I think it's absolutely ridiculous. A family friend worked as a nanny for a while and the parents of the baby she babysat would get upset when they napped at ALL. Why? The parents blamed naps for the baby waking up at night. It's a BABY, it NEEDS naps and will most likely wake up throughout the night With or Without the nap.

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I'm a nanny to, and just hearing that makes me cringe. I dont think I could work for a family like that!

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My niece wouldn’t adhere to a nap schedule no matter how hard I tried. When she got mobile I let her sleep where she fell cause it was easier than fighting her to sleep. She once fell asleep mid scoot, tushie up in the air.

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I always worked in intervals of awake times. There are charts online for this. Sometimes my daughter would have 2 naps at 7 months sometimes she would have 3. It depended on how long she slept for. I would NEVER left her sleep past 5pm at that point because her bedtime was 7 but other than that I didn't wake her up from a nap. Now she is too and she has a 2 hour nap from 12 to 2 and goes to bed at 7 and sleeps until 7. She's a well rested little monkey!

Limiting child/babies naps?

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