Hi, it’s Linda Szmulewitz, owner of Sleep Tight Consultants. Today on the Sleepy Qs podcast. We’re going to be talking about all things related to daycare and your child’s sleep. Before we get into today’s topic. I just wanted to remind everybody that as you’ve been enjoying our podcasts, please write in your five-star review so that we can continue bringing you all of these great episodes. In addition, if you have any specific questions about your child’s sleep that you would like us to discuss here on the Sleepy Qs podcast, please feel free to go to our website, www.sleepyqs.com and fill out a contact form so that we can answer your questions here.
Questions for your daycare provider
In our discussion today about your child’s sleep and daycare, we’re going to start off by talking a little bit about some questions that it may be helpful to ask your child’s daycare before you start attending there. And also questions that might be useful to ask as you’re making the decision about what daycare to send your child to, we’re also going to talk specifically about baby sleep and daycare things to know about your child’s sleep in daycare when you are sending a baby to daycare. And then we’re going to talk about toddler, sleep in daycare.
To start off, let’s talk about those questions that may be helpful to ask your child’s daycare when you’re both interviewing them, or just questions to ask as your child is starting. So to start off, let’s talk about things to ask your child’s daycare when you’re considering where to send your child, or once they’ve already been enrolled and you’re trying to figure out what sorts of questions you need to ask them before it gets going.
Sleep environment
First of all, I would find out how the cribs are situated in the room. In my experience, my sort of least preferred way of having the cribs situated in your child’s classroom are when all of the cribs are around the perimeter of the room. I know that a lot of daycares will do this either because of their space constraints or because it works for the daycare workers to be able to see all of the babies. Many children have a hard time settling into sleep when they see like, “Oh, look, they’re my friends. They’re just all playing right there.”
The most common room configuration that I often find is where all of the cribs are at one side of the room. And then the play areas at the other side of the room. Ideally where those cribs are at the one side of the room might be darker. So hopefully they can sort of turn off that bank of lights on that side of the room, or make it a little bit dimmer. You might even find that you can request to have your child in a little bit of a darker corner in the back of the room. So that there’s just a little bit less distraction. And you might even be able to bring a white noise machine in to put next to your child’s crib.
The best case scenario that I’ve ever encountered for a sleeping scenario at daycare is when there’s a separate sleeping room or a separate nap room. This is great! I see this really very rarely actually during COVID. I see it less often because often daycares have to make use of every inch of space in order to spread children out as much as possible. But whenever it does happen. It’s great. I know for instance, Stanford University’s daycare has a separate nap room. A lot of home daycares we’ll have a separate nap room because it’s a home. And so maybe a bedroom upstairs is where all of the children’s sleep. And then downstairs is where they play.
What are their sleep protocols
I would also find out from daycare, especially if you’re sending a very young baby there, three months, maybe even younger, will they swaddled them there? How much also are they willing to participate in sleep training when the time comes? So will they put them down awake? I’ve seen some daycares that will never put children down awake. This may really complicate things later on when you’re now trying to help your child learn some sleep skills and you want them to go in awake, but daycare will not do that. They continue to rock them, either holding them or a lot of daycares, the cribs are on casters. So they’ll rock the actual crib itself.
Sleep timing
You also may want to talk to your daycare about just the timing of their sleep. A lot of daycares, when you first start sending your child there, they will ask you what your child’s schedule is. But it’s unlikely that your three month old is going to have a really set schedule. So you’re mostly going to be asking them to follow your child’s awake windows, making sure that you’re updating them on what those awake windows are as your child is getting older until they have more of a schedule established. And also really talking to them about when you need your baby to take a last late nap. So if your baby wakes up from a last nap at say three o’clock and they’re five months old now, when you get home, it’s six o’clock and they’re already over tired and they’re exhausted. So you may need to talk to daycare about ensuring that your baby is taking a last late nap at the end of the day, so that when they get home, they’re not overtired. And you’re able to have a little bit more time with them in the evening. Of course it is possible in that scenario that I just described that your child might fall asleep on the ride home. And in that case, that actually buys you a little bit more time before it’s bedtime.
This is an adjustment for everyone
Other things to think about as you’re starting to send your child to daycare: one thing to know is just that it’s going to take your child some time to adjust. We all want things to fall into place as quickly as possible, but babies, they take time. Children take time. They don’t just immediately adapt to new circumstances overnight.
If your child isn’t going to daycare on consecutive days, this can also lead to it, taking a little bit longer for them to fall into patterns and to adjust. So if they’re going say every other day, each day they go, it’s still unfamiliar and so it may take longer for them to settle in. I usually recommend trying to send your child on as many consecutive days as possible. So if you’re just doing three days a week, maybe that means Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they’re there. Yes come Monday again each week, it will take some time for them to settle in, but it actually will be easier by the time they get to Wednesday to know what to expect and to be adapting.
Create realistic expectations
I would also just know that in the beginning, a lot of very young babies don’t sleep very well in daycare early on. It’s again, a big adjustment. So I would just be aware of that, know that they’re going to need some extra sleep at night and that you need to make sure that you’re really accounting for that.
Know that their sleep is going to be different at daycare than it is at home at home. Your child is going to have a separate room, most likely, or even if they’re sharing with a sibling, they probably don’t have, you know, six or seven other children that are in the same room as them. And your child’s room at home, maybe dark. Whereas at daycare it’s not, I don’t find that you have to do everything in your power to match your child’s daycare sleep setting at home. In many cases, children will do very different things at daycare than they will do at home. And so at home you may find if the room is brightly lit, like it is a daycare, they can’t sleep. And so at home I recommend doing what works best in that environment and not trying to match it identically.
Sleep timing may be different at daycare then at home
One thing that I often that we’ll caution parents about is that a lot of times daycare has a hard time getting babies down for a nap, first thing in the morning. So, whereas at home, they might take a morning nap that starts as early as 8:00 AM. At daycare, even if you’re dropping your child off at eight or earlier, there’s a lot of commotion that’s going on at that time of the day. There’s a lot that daycare workers are trying to make sure happens. Babies are being dropped off. They’re getting changed. They’re being fed. I find in many cases, daycares really struggled to get babies down for naps earlier than 9:00 AM. So if your baby wakes up early, they’re an early riser or they even wake up at a normal time, you know, say 6/6:30 making it to nine that might mean that now they’re pretty overtired. And so you might want to try doing a little bit of a cat nap early, so maybe your child accidentally, or maybe on purpose, takes a cat nap in the car on the way to daycare at. That actually can buy you a little bit of time so that by the time daycares getting them down for that nap, now they’re not overtired. Or maybe it means if your baby does wake up extraordinarily early, if you don’t need to get them to daycare super early, you deliberately do a cat nap at home from say 7-7:30 in order for them to arrive and not already be over tired.
Even if daycare sleep isn’t great, home sleep can be good
I do want to assure parents about babies and daycare that even if your child is not a great napper at daycare, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their sleep at home will be a mess. So daycare is a lot of stimulation. There’s a lot of excitement. It’s way more simulation than you could ever produce in your home. And so a lot of babies are so completely exhausted when they get home. They actually do end up sleeping pretty well. So you may have a child who hardly naps at all. Maybe, you know, 30 minutes, maybe an hour for the whole day. And then they get home and they crash and they sleep 12 hours at night. I know, for instance, my daughter was like that she hardly napped in daycare, but she did great at night. And on the weekends, she really used that time to catch up. So that is another thing that I will often caution parents about, you know, as much as on the weekend, we want to run our errands or maybe you’re seeing friends. Or, you know, having visitors come, please keep in mind that your child really needs that weekend time to recover from their lost sleep during the week. And so you can’t run around crazy. It might mean that on the weekend, parents need to do a little bit more divide and conquer while the baby stays at home with the parent and is getting the sleep that they need, that they’ve missed out on their whole week at daycare.
Toddler sleep at daycare
When it comes to toddler sleep at daycare, there are definitely some things to think about, in this regard. So most daycares, although of course not all will start to move children towards one nap at a year old. So some of this happens just by default. As your child gets older, they need to be more tired in order to be ready to fall asleep for those naps. And in the daycare environment, whereas we’ve already discussed, it’s very stimulating. Babies. And one-year-olds just might not be as exhausted in the morning in order to be able to take that morning nap. And so rather than struggling with children to try to get in 2 naps, daycare, just to make it a little bit easier for everybody, will often push children towards one nap at a year old.
Now, if you’ve listened to our episode about the transition to one nap, you’ll know that most children are not really ready for one nap until somewhere between 12 and 15 months old. So that means that your child may still kind of struggle a little bit with that nap transition until they get to a place where they’re really ready for it.
That being said, I’ve seen quite a few children be able to tolerate one nap, at least on the days that they’re at daycare. What this means most importantly, is that on the weekends or on days that they’re at home with you, for whatever reason, it’s really probably going to be necessary to maintain those two naps until they get to at least 15 months old, even possibly older. And then they’re really ready for one nap. One nap means that they’re probably taking that nap starting at noon. In a perfect world scenario, ideally they’re napping until two, and now they’re going to be up from two o’clock until bedtime. So, what that means is that on those days that your child takes one nap, bedtime is probably going to need to be pretty soon after you get home from the day, because they’re going to be really tired. And being overtired at bedtime. If you’ve listened to the episode on early rising, you know, that that causes children to then wake up early the next day. Please, please, please though. Do not worry about keeping your child on the same schedule when they’re at home. It’s okay for them to maintain those two naps on days that they’re at home and they’ll still do the one nap at daycare.
Naps on a cot at daycare
So one nap at daycare also means that your child is probably going to be sleeping on a cot. I know many parents really worry about this. They think to themselves, how is my one-year old possibly going to be able to sleep on a cot? They sleep in a crib. That’s all they’ve ever known, but daycare makes it happen. So in a daycare setting, children sleep on cots at once they’re in a toddler room and the daycare teachers know how to get children sleeping in that environment. There’s a lot of the peer pressure experience that makes it happen. Kids look around, they’re aware that everybody else is doing it and they start to do it too.
And so I know it feels very shocking to parents, but they can do that and they can make it happen. Often daycare will let parents bring in a special blanket from home that your child is used to sleeping under. Sometimes daycare workers will sit next to kids. I always caution parents if your child is able to sleep independently, please make sure that the daycare teachers aren’t sitting next to them, patting them to sleep. If they are doing that, I would have them back off too, just sitting next to your child and sitting there until they’re asleep. If your child wakes up at less than an hour and a half, I would talk to daycare about seeing if they can encourage them to go back to sleep. An hour and a half for one nap is really the bare minimum. And if if they’re not even getting that amount, then they are definitely going to be very overtired by bedtime.
Toddler nap at daycare pushes bedtime late
So on the other end of the toddler nap, spectrum our children who are in daycare, who are still napping, but now it’s actually causing them a problem for their night’s sleep. So as your child moves towards two years old, they have about a five hour awake window between their nap and bedtime. So again, if they’re napping from 12 to two, that means that they’re going to be ready for bed by about seven o’clock. In many cases, a lot of daycares though, that nap isn’t until one. So they might be napping from one to three. Now that means bedtime won’t be until eight o’clock, but as your child gets older, now you’re moving towards three years old. Number one, if they’re taking a two hour nap at daycare, the average nap for a three-year-old is an hour and a half. So now they’re getting more sleep during the day than they actually need. And that awake window for three-year-old is six hours.
So one of the most common scenarios that I come in contact with are toddlers, who nap at daycare. They sleep until three o’clock or later they come home. They have tons of energy because they’ve taken a two hour nap and their parents are trying to get them to bed at say 7, 7:30, 8 o’clock. But they’re not so tired. They’re not ready for bed until at least nine. And so you have to definitely manage your expectations for what time your child is actually going to be ready to go to sleep. And, and this is really important. You might need to talk to your daycare provider about waking your child up. About not allowing them to sleep two hours or even an hour and a half. If they will shorten it to an hour, that would be great. There are some Department of Children and Family Services requirements that say that children at a certain age, and I don’t even know if it’s up until five, but it possibly could be, that the daycare is required to offer a nap for children at those ages. And this often presents a lot of problems for parents. So, like I said, talk to your daycare about what they’re agreeable to doing. Will they wake your child up early? In some cases, I have had parents be able to work with their daycare on letting their child play quietly on their cot or maybe giving them some books to play with. Again, this is something that I’ve seen become a little bit more difficult with COVID because there are limited spaces to have children who are not napping, then go and play quietly. But in pre COVID times, there might’ve been a separate room where a teacher could take some of the older toddlers where they could rest quietly or play quietly and then not nap which is often preferred for older toddlers.
I definitely find it happen where on the weekends now those are children who are not napping because they are napping five days a week. So definitely, I would make a point to have a conversation with your child’s daycare teacher, or you might even need to talk with the director about ensuring that your toddler is not napping too long at daycare so that it’s not interfering with their night’s sleep.
Thanks so much for listening into our conversation today about your child’s sleep and daycare.
