Big Boy Rest Time

Seth is such a big guy now that he does not need a nap every day. This has been a couple of month struggle. There are some days when he is clearly tired and needs a nap - and other days when he doesn't need one but if I put him in his dark room like we do at nighttime - he will fall asleep anyway. He then is very hard to wake up - quite grumpy - confused about the time of day - and the hardest is that he does not want to go to be at night. Understandably, because he isn't tired! So it can be an hour or more of Seth calling for us repeatedly - and we having to go in and out of the room. Jerald and I had enough of this. With the help of some very smart Mom friends - we came up with... "Big Boy Rest Time!" We wanted to give Seth (and me) some quiet time but not force him to sleep if he wasn't tired. Big Boy Rest Time - happens some time after lunch. We leave the blinds open but still do a story and a song before I leave him and close the door. We have this really cool timer that is easy for Seth to understand when he is supposed to be in his room and when rest time is over. There is no sound when the time is up - so if Seth does fall asleep it doesn't wake him up. The rules of Big Boy Rest Time are that Seth has to stay in his room, he can not call for me until the time is up, he can play with whatever toys he wants but cannot make too big of a mess, and if he is tired he can take a nap. So far this has worked amazingly well. About half the time, Seth plays quietly in his room and when the time is up (about 45 minutes) he calls for me. He and I are both in good moods that we each got some time to ourselves (the trick is getting Justin to also sleep during this time!). The other times, Seth plays for a little while, usually bringing toys into his bed and then eventually falls asleep with these toys (see above picture). Because the shades are open Seth is much less confused about the time of day and much less grumpy. Hopefully we can keep this up when school starts.