The Right Place for Naps
Q: What do you feel is an appropriate atmosphere for naps? Should a child have a set naptime and place or should they be allowed to lay down when and where they feel like it?
A: Yes, children need to learn appropriate places for naps and sleep. They need to learn how to adjust to their special spaces — their cribs. They need to learn the shapes and rhythms of daily human activities, such as eating, playtime, sleep times.
By helping structure your child's world gently and with clarity, you are also teaching your young one classification skills: where we sit when we eat (high chair); where we settle into sleep (crib) where we can play with toys (bedroom or toy room floor). All these time and space learnings will increase your child's cognitive abilities to conceptualize categories and will also help increase the emotional harmony of the household.
Alice Sterling Honig, PhD, a professor emerita of child development at Syracuse University, is the author of many books on infants and toddlers, including Behavior Guidance for Infants and Toddlers and, with H. Brophy, Talking With Your Baby: Family as the First School
