Beep, All Done!

Dax has recently decided that he's not going to take a nap, anymore. I had tried everything, and it had been 5 days since he'd taken an afternoon nap. But with him only being 2 and down to 1 nap a day, that was much needed alone time for me that I was NOT willing to just let go. I know he needed a nap too, because he would fall asleep around 6pm if he didn't nap earlier and then wouldn't go down for the night until midnight. Not to mention he was SO ornery during the day.

So, after doing some looking around and reading on the internet (don't you just love the web) and talking to my mom, I got the idea to at least have "quiet time" if Dax wasn't going to take a nap. So I went to the store and bought a cheap baby gate to put in his doorway. We went home and did his naptime routine. I put up the baby gate and told him he needed to stay on his bed. He stood at the gate and cried and screamed for 20 min until he pushed the gate over. I set it back up and once again he stood at the gate and screamed for me. Another 20 min went by when I finally decided to try setting a timer. So I set a timer for just 5 min on my phone and went and showed Dax. I told him to calm down, wiped his nose, and then explained that he needed to stay in his room and be quiet until the timer beeped and then I would let him out. I set the phone down on the floor outside the gate, so that he could see it, and there was not a peep from him until the timer beeped! I went to get him and this is what I found:

He had sat at his door staring at the phone through the gate for the whole 5 min! He was saying, "Beep! All Done!" This worked out perfect because Dax now knows that he has to stay in his room until the beep. And he knows he won't just be trapped in his room for who knows how long.

So now he naps every other day and the days he doesn't nap, he gets to turn the light on and play quietly in his room until the beeper goes off.

It's wonderful!! Praise to the timer :)