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Bye Bye Naptime?
By Shel Franco
. "Because at school, they see all their peers taking naps, so then they join in and take the nap." 
Along with the peer pressure, Waldstein says that the authority of a teacher helps to encourage the daily nap. Oftentimes, children listen to teachers in a different way than they listen to their parents.
Waldstein and Zinberg insist that it is all right to skip actual naptime on the weekends. Instead, parents should be ready to employ the tactic of quiet time. As an added bonus, some children that claim they aren't tired will often fall asleep on their own.
That's what Michelle Smith from Chico, Calif. found when she noticed her son falling asleep in front of the television each weekend. "In fact, I call Sundays Max's Nap Day."
A. Zinberg says that you should not force the nap, and you should never use naptime as a threat. If you do, you're setting yourself up for a continuous tug-of-war and a battle you just can't win. Waldstein adds that when a child refuses to nap, she should not be punished for it. "If [the] body isn't tired, and it doesn't want to sleep, it's pretty hard to make a child sleep," she says. In both instances, the most important thing to remember is for the parent to avoid giving a negative connotation to the bed in which the child sleeps.
Waldstein and Zinberg agree that it is nice for both the child and the parent to have a break during the day to recharge. They advocate a rest period that involves doing something that isn't physically challenging. To help the child understand, a kitchen timer can be set to 30 minutes or one hour. This way the child has a tangible reference as to when the quiet period is over.
