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When my four-year-old daughter was a baby, her schedule ruled our lives. She ate every two-and-a-half hours. She napped twice a day. In her crib. In our house. When the time changed, we meticulously moved her bedtime by ten minutes a day for a week before the switch. We lived by that schedule, and I don't regret it one bit. Babies thrive on schedules.
Parents do not.
Parents have to figure out how to shower, exercise, eat, clean, pay bills, see friends, attend family functions and care for other children within the structure of that baby schedule. Parents have to deal with the sighs of friends and family members when the family leaves the barely-started party at 7:39 p.m. so the kids can get to bed. Parents have to stare at each other or the television from 8 p.m. on pretty much every night for several years, housebound in the name of the almighty schedule. It's a drag.
Once my daughter dropped her nap shortly before her third birthday, I thought I might die. I relied on that naptime to get a chance to shower/exercise/eat/clean/pay bills/have sex/nap. I lived in fear of the nap leaving for months beforehand, and when I realized that yes, she really shouldn't nap anymore, because if she napped she was up until 11 p.m. rocking the house, I admit that I cried a little bit. But I quickly realized I wanted my 8:30-11 p.m. back more than I wanted my 1-2 p.m. back. And really? Having to be home from 1-2 p.m. was starting to hold us back.
She's been nap-free now for almost two years, and now I love it. I know other four-year-olds who still nap, and I can't imagine having to be back at home at a certain time on the weekends. I feel sorry for those parents even as they are feeling sorry for me. Fortunately, parenting is a job that can be done in myriad ways, and I prefer to do my parenting somewhere other than in my house. I love Chateau Travolta, especially its new library, but I feel confined if I spend more than five daylight weekend hours there. I want to be out! In the sunshine! At the park! Downtown! Anywhere! For one thing, my daughter is more easy-going when she's not bored, and she gets bored a lot faster in the house than she does poking around somewhere she hasn't seen in a while. Her toys take on new interest in Union Station than they do in her bedroom. Dropping the nap and bending the bedtime schedule has reintroduced our friends to us -- we can eat dinner past 5 p.m. now. We can stay at parties until 10 or later (if we can induce her to lay down on someone's couch and sleep). We can take her to shows (we did Annie on New Year's Eve). We can stay at the zoo as long as she wants without worrying she'll self-destruct. We can have adventures in a bigger and better way, and I really like it better this way.
I can tell the structure of her preschool helps her a lot at home, too. She gets that time is divided into sections, some for work and some for play and some for rest. She gets the zero-sum game, in that if she wants 10 books instead of five at night, she can't play in the bathtub. We do let her negotiate within these parameters, because really, what do I care if she plays in the bathtub for twenty minutes or I read her extra books? We let her negotiate within the boundaries of her schedule, and that usually makes everyone happy ... there's an illusion of control there for everyone involved.
Some parts of the schedule are non-negotiable. My husband and I have to go to work five days a week at a certain time, and she has to go to school. It's important she learn that, since she's going to be in school for, oh, at least twelve more years. Some parts are totally negotiable -- do we want to eat lunch on Saturday now, or play for a while and then eat lunch? I guess after four years, a lot of blogging, great talks with friends and family and at least 8,643 parenting books, that's my parenting philosophy:
