Child psychology: a child is forced to sleep in kindergarten. The child does not sleep during the day in kindergarten - what to do The child does not want to sleep in the garden

Lack of daytime sleep kindergarten- a big problem for most children, especially those whose age is over 3-5 years. Usually quiet time for children, this is such a sacramental time when you can either chat quietly with each other, or vice versa - fool around. Of course, children who refuse to sleep cause inconvenience not only to nannies and teachers, but also to those kids who are not at all averse to taking a nap in the daytime. Additional problems follow from this: educators put forward claims to parents, going so far as to ask them to take the child out of the garden during quiet time. How to teach a child to sleep in a kindergarten? This question, for sure, is asked by most mothers and educators.

It is very important to think about this in advance, even before the baby begins attending kindergarten. Surely, the parents who queued up for the kindergarten already had the honor to talk with the teachers, it makes sense to ask the teachers a question about which methods home education it is worth resorting in advance so that the child does not have problems sleeping in the kindergarten in the future. Specialists will tell you about the daily routine and in the process of preparing for kindergarten, you will have to slightly change the child's regimen, for example, start accustoming him to sleep during the day at home at clearly designated hours. Such measures will develop a habit in the baby and the question of how to teach the child to sleep in the kindergarten in the future, most likely, will not arise.


However, if your child is already attending kindergarten and such a problem is an edge, then you should immediately start solving it.


It is not easy to teach a child to sleep in a kindergarten, and often this process does not depend on the parents at all, but on the approach and severity of the educators. However, mom and dad are simply obliged to have a conversation with the baby, clarify why he does not sleep, and try to explain the benefits and necessity of daytime sleep. If your child is small, you may think that conversations are just a waste of time, but this is not at all the case. Kids understand everything perfectly, especially if they try to convey the idea not in an edifying, but in an explanatory tone.

During the conversation, you should also find out the reasons why the child does not want to sleep in the kindergarten. It is not uncommon for someone to interfere with him or he feels uncomfortable or unprotected. At the first scenario, it is extremely necessary to talk with the teacher. By the way, the process of accustoming a child to sleep in kindergarten in any case should be controlled not only by parents, but also by the teacher. It is she and the nanny who monitor the situation in the children's team, including during quiet hours, thanks to which it is from them that we should expect an objective assessment of why the baby refuses to sleep.


In the absence of comfort or a feeling of insecurity, it is recommended to give the child to kindergarten his favorite toy, say, the one with which he sleeps at home.


If the case is severe and your baby is not just lying quietly with his eyes open, but interferes with other children, you may have to visit the kindergarten during a quiet hour and control the child. A good way would be to take him to another room and have an educational conversation. To teach a child to sleep in a kindergarten, you need to discuss all the nuances with the teachers: for example, try to ask them to active games with children an hour before nap time, and also to warn that you will soon have to go to the bedroom.


Don't forget to sleep on the weekends. Try to completely repeat the routine that the baby follows in kindergarten. Perhaps this is the most The best way, with the help of which parents can influence the teaching of the child to sleep in the kindergarten.


And do not forget about the favorable and cozy atmosphere at home. Often the problems of the baby with daytime sleep associated with experiences due to the restless atmosphere prevailing at home.

If your child does not want to fall asleep in a group, first of all, find out the reason for this. Children who have just started walking preschool, in the early days should not be left for an hour. This should be done only when the child gets used to the fact that he visits kindergarten every day.

Make the home routine close to the daily routine in kindergarten. Even on weekends and holidays, try to stick to it. Getting used to the daily moments, the child will be easier to fall asleep in kindergarten. Sleep in the middle of the day will not cause him a negative reaction, but will be associated with rest.

The reason for the wakefulness of the child during a quiet hour may be his. In this case, you do not need to force the child to sleep. Ask the caregiver to sit on the bed with him for a while and stroke his back. So the baby will be able to calm down faster and, possibly, fall asleep.

An overly active baby, having gained impressions in the first half of the day, simply cannot calm down quickly. His brain processes the information received.

The child cannot fall asleep during nap time due to distractions. These may include noise outside the window, the buzzing of insects, or an uncomfortable temperature in the bedroom. In a conversation with the teachers of the group, indicate this individual feature your child.

Replacing types of recreation

Children, in general, live according to the regime. However, not all children can sleep at a fixed time. Everyone has their own internal cycle. Therefore, it is better for group educators to take this into account at the first time the child is in kindergarten.

If necessary, you can contact a kindergarten psychologist. In his office, conditions are created that allow children to relax. Usage special techniques will allow the specialist to find out the reason for the wakefulness of the child.

Sleep in a quiet hour can be replaced by another type of rest. You can invite the child to just lie quietly in the crib. Even if he lies down for twenty to thirty minutes, this will give him the opportunity to take a break from vigorous activity.

There are children who categorically refuse to be in the bedroom and do not allow other children to sleep. The reasons for this may be different. Replace sleep with quiet games like board games. So the baby will be able to switch to a more relaxed type of activity and not interfere with the rest of the guys.

At home, the son slept during the day every other day, and in the kindergarten he generally refused daytime sleep. Why is it bad? It turns out that it is daytime sleep that allows you to remove cortisol, the stress hormone, from the child's body.

Therefore, children who do not sleep during the day are especially excitable and tired in the evening.

Paradox! The more tired the baby is, the more difficult it is for him to fall asleep.

What to do if the child does not sleep well in the kindergarten or refuses to have an afternoon rest at all? We have some tips!

Tip 1: If the child does not want to sleep, he may have already outgrown daytime sleep

At 3 years old, almost all children sleep during the day. By the age of 4, only half of the kids fit into daytime sleep. At the age of 5, only 25% of children need regular daytime rest.

If the child does not sleep well or refuses to rest at all, he may not have a need for sleep during the day. Try to negotiate with the teacher so that the baby just lies with his eyes closed.

When my son refused to go to bed senior group, the teacher went forward. The child does not want to sleep? Well, let him quietly collect puzzles or draw.

Tip 2: the child does not want to sleep in the kindergarten? Say goodbye to rituals at home

Because of the unusual environment, the kids are nervous at first and cannot relax in the kindergarten. The child does not want to sleep, because there is no beloved bear, mother's lullaby and a warm blanket nearby.

At kindergarten? Try to keep home rituals of laying to a minimum. Let the baby learn to fall asleep without motion sickness, songs and bottles of compote. Then everything will work out in the garden!

Tip 3: does the child sleep badly in kindergarten? acknowledge his feelings

When my son said he couldn't sleep, I confess I didn't immediately support him. I thought that other children somehow manage to meet the daytime sleep!

In fact, the baby is going through a serious separation crisis with mom. Talk to him more often about this: that the teacher will take care of him, that in the evening you will go to your favorite swing together ... If the child does not want to sleep, he usually worries. Suddenly mom won't pick it up at all! So pay more attention to the little one and explain that you will definitely come for him.

Conduct a survey among the parents of the eldest or preparatory group, and you will learn from most of them that at home the children do not sleep during the day for a long time. Ask children why they don't like going to kindergarten, and you will hear that one of the main reasons is naps. And if you organize a kindergarten without sleep? This can be done both by the forces of the family and in a preschool institution.

When my daughter was about four and a half years old, we started having trouble sleeping during the day. Laying it became more and more difficult, often the laying process itself took more than two hours. As a result, she fell asleep at four o'clock in the afternoon, woke up at six, and laying down for the night took place well after midnight. After consulting with my husband, we decided on an experiment: do not stack at all. As a result, by nine o'clock in the evening the child himself could barely crawl to the bed and slept soundly until the morning, and in the evening the parents received several hours of time for themselves. We lived in this mode all summer, but when it was time to return to the kindergarten in the fall, the problem again loomed on the horizon. Marta is a very obedient girl, and even not very obedient children sleep in the kindergarten "for company", so she, as expected, rested for two hours and returned home in the evening. After that, real hell began in the evening: the child jumped on the sofas and on the heads of his parents until late at night, and in the morning, having not slept, did not want to get up at half past seven in the morning. Parents consoled themselves with the fact that the child would sleep in the kindergarten, but life in the mode “we can’t lie down, and then we can’t get up” strained the whole family. On top of that, I was pregnant, so late lights and lack of sleep were especially acute.

Kindergarten without sleep: organization by the family

After living like this for about a week and realizing that I would not last long in this mode, I began to look for a solution on the Internet. And the first thing I realized: I'm not the only one. Because very few children at 5-6 years old actually still need daytime sleep. Each mother solved problems with kindergarten sleep in her own way, but in general there were several options:

Pick up the child from the kindergarten, and instead drive to different sections.
Pick up the child after lunch, that is, before daytime sleep. In the afternoon, again, take to circles.
Pick up the child after dinner, and then bring back after sleep.

Obviously, the first option is suitable for mothers who do not work at all and can fully devote themselves to the child. The second is for those mothers who work part-time or at home. The third - to the same mothers, but on the condition that the kindergarten is located next to the house (otherwise, it is unlikely that you will want to ride back and forth four times a day).

I am a freelance mom, and we have a kindergarten within a five-minute walk, so the third option seemed to me the most successful. In our kindergarten in the afternoon there are often different classes: choreography, English language, and if you pick up your daughter after dinner, then she would miss them. Secondly, the extra two hours to work every day were very important to me.

In the “pick up after dinner and bring back after sleep” mode, we lived a whole academic year, and here are the benefits it has given our family:

Mom:
Problems with putting to sleep at night are gone - my daughter falls asleep at about 9 pm and sleeps soundly for 10 hours;
In the morning, my daughter wakes up without an alarm clock at half past seven and says: “Mom, get up, it's time to go to kindergarten!”;
Again there was time for evening communication with her husband or for an additional couple of hours of sleep;
After the working day was divided into three parts: work (9-12), daytime communication with my daughter (12.30-15), work again (15.30-18), it became easier to plan the day, I began to do more.

Daughter:
Marta is very attached to her mom and dad, and being alone for a whole day, even at the age of five, was still hard for her. The opportunity to be with parents for several hours in the middle of the day reduced the psychological burden, the kindergarten began to be perceived more positively.
If there was no strong wind and rain, we spent almost all the time of kindergarten sleep on the street. For health, this is a hundred times more useful than lying in a stuffy bedroom with twenty children.

Question: Hello! Tell me, please, about daytime sleep. We have children in the group who are not yet 3 years old and who are already 4 years old. My child sleeps at home no more than 1.5 hours during the day. In kindergarten, the time allotted for daytime sleep is 3 hours. He wakes up, cries, does not want to sleep anymore, they scold him and force him to sleep more. Because of this, he does not want to go to kindergarten. Tell me what to do in this case.

Lyubov Goloshchapova, child psychologist, answers:

Your child doesn't want to. Where is it seen, to make a person sleep? It's like making love, making you see (and not watching), making you understand. Unreal.

Another thing is strange: why do you want this play to continue?

Your child (like every other child) will never be "like everyone else." Because the concept of "like everyone else" is empty. This is just a phrase, in fact, there is no meaning behind it. This expression is used in speech because they can force a person to obey. To put it simply, to manage a person. This is the only purpose of the words "like everyone else."

Why should I do this? children often ask. When adults lack arguments, they say: because everyone does it. And what does this prove? When children grow up, few of them retain the divine ability to continue to ask: why should I do this? - in others and in myself. Most walk along the path called "like everyone else", with their heads bowed, having swallowed all the instructions, resigned to the fact that they are bad debtors in all matters, they always owe something. Even the expression is a special "sense of duty." What kind of feeling is this? And in what place can a person feel it? From him, the back stoops, the shoulders drop, a heaviness appears in the body, pulling down to the ground. A deplorable state.

It can, of course, be said that a person without a sense of duty will be irresponsible, frivolous, will flutter like a butterfly, without straining in any way. Yes it is! And this is a wonderful state. Creative, bright, giving good mood, excellent health, excellent health and overflowing energy - in general, everything is like in children. Some people are afraid of this state. They invent that a person without a sense of duty will stop caring for his loved ones, will not work, etc., but they do not say the most important thing that scares them so much - this person will become free and uncontrollable. That is, it will not have buttons that manipulators love to press, and levers that they like to pull. A controlled person is very convenient, he is almost like a biorobot, like a mechanical toy: he pressed on pity - he received a gift, pressed on a sense of duty - he received more. There are many varieties of such buttons and levers, and all of them are an alien, artificial element in the human body, such as a prosthesis or an implanted electrode. In a word, redundant.

It is unlikely that anyone would argue that a cat has a sense of duty. But this does not prevent her from being a wonderful mother, taking care and gently raising her kids, protecting them from any real or imaginary danger, raising and teaching. Does she love her children? Anyone who has seen a cat with kittens knows the answer very well.

In this sense, a person is not much different from a cat. Can a sense of duty make him sincerely and lovingly care for someone? Can it make you fall in love? Admire? Rejoice? Answer yourself. Fiction is everything. Buttons and levers.

Now let's look at another aspect of your question. There have already been many letters in which parents from last strength they try to adapt to the circumstances in which they find themselves, although they do not like these circumstances at all. Some were unlucky, as they think, with a teacher, others - with a group in the garden, the third is not allowed to live in peace by any one child in the kindergarten. These parents are united by one, in my opinion, a strange property: in their letters they never mention the possibility of changing one kindergarten to another or even raising a child outside the kindergarten.

Maybe this is also a manifestation of the “like everyone else” phenomenon?

Not all children go to kindergarten. And maybe it is your child who needs, needs, and must spend a lot of time alone with himself or, say, with his dad. Everyone has their own path, and this fact can only be respected and recognized if you want to live with joy and pleasure, and not in a constant struggle with circumstances.

How often the situation develops: the child is taken to the garden, but he does not like it there, he cries, gets sick, throws tantrums in the morning. On the other hand, educators also have little joy from such a baby: they are also unhappy and complain to their parents. Parents receive the most shells: on the one hand, they are horrified by what is happening to the child, on the other hand, they sometimes want to kill all the educators, along with the nannies, for their eternal complaints and discontent (and what do they pay money for?). And if, in addition, the child is sent to the garden so that he can go to an unloved job, then life generally turns into something incomprehensible. Everyone is bad. Why is this needed?

Let's finally change something. Let's stop torturing each other and ourselves. Let's stop being patient and adapting. Let's just live the way we like, how pleasant and easy it is for us.

You have the right not to be "like everyone else." You can afford the luxury of deciding where to take your child, finding solutions that make your child, and most importantly, you yourself feel great! Simply - live and enjoy it.

In your particular case of napping in kindergarten, I would talk to the caregivers (two? or one?). I would explain to them, calmly, without pressure and pathos, that my child does not need sleep for as much as 3 hours, that the child himself does an excellent job with how much sleep he needs (to eat, go to the toilet), and an indicator of this is good health and good mood when he gets up. Look at their reaction, listen to what they have to say. It is possible that you can easily find mutual language. And if not, no problem either. So this is not your garden. This means that for your baby there is another, very good opportunity that is waiting for him - it will not wait. Just imagine, she is sitting, this wonderful opportunity, in a secluded place, and is waiting for you personally with your child personally, and dances in place with impatience: well, when, when will they finally find me? When will they get tired of clinging to the old, unpleasant? Hurry, come here, I'm here, I'm here!