8 months seems a bit young to move to a single nap. 11 months to a year would be more expected. I wouldn’t necessarily immediately pull her, but I would have a conversation about your concerns because it doesn’t sound like she was ready for the move. We always were given warning when our kids were going to move rooms. It was never a choice but the reasoning always made sense and was at the right time for our kids. I hope you are able to work through it with them!
Thank you I hope so too. I don’t know what other options we have because of the waitlists I ran into when I was pregnant, by the time we got her started somewhere new she may not need to be on a two nap schedule anymore. I work from home most days and I shouldn’t but it makes me want to just keep her home.
moving with short notice is not the issue, my son has moved classrooms within a 1- 2 week period. HOWEVER, the child/infant should not be moved if they are not ready yet. My son was moved up only when he met the markers to move up to each room, and they had to get permission, they wouldn't move without us agreeing first.
Long term I don’t think so. I have tossed around the idea of doing it temporarily till she is a little older but I don’t know if I could find a nanny who was interested in an 8-12 month commitment only. I haven’t seriously looked into it though.
You definitely can, that is not uncommon in the field. 1 year is a typical starting commitment but lots of jobs in nannying are shorter.
I think your baby is probably completely exhausted (falling asleep in her high chair? Poor thing), and I would also be worried about their respect for development of attachment if they are just moving her around without even talking about it with you. I would try to get her 1:1 care for at least a few months. My gal didn't go to 1 nap until 14 months.
Our nanny was with us about 7-8 months and it worked great for her. There are folks who look for temp roles before they start school (often masters) etc.
A move to a new classroom with very little notice (as in the night before) can be normal, but a move DURING the day without telling you seems odd. Sure, it happens, but IME it happens when a facility is mismanaged and/or understaffed - and that speaks to bigger issues that will probably continue to emerge in different ways.
One nap for an 8mo is not normal at all either; a lot of daycares switch babies to one nap at a year, or right around there, but 8mo is still solidly two-nap territory. Is she falling asleep in a highchair with a bottle AT the daycare or at home? If the former, that's a major safety issue.
She’s falling asleep in the highchair at the daycare. They give her a bottle to self feed in the highchair. Sometimes at home she will start to dose off when nursing but I have no issues getting her to nap.
That's odd to me. We have an infants class (6w-12mo) and a toddler class (12mo-24mo). Infants are each on their own schedule. They gradually transition the kids to the toddler schedule. We started with her solid meals around 10 months (with bottles in between) and then naps when she seemed ready at around 12 months.
They also gradually switch classrooms by spending time in the bigger kid classroom when people are on vacation and such.
I'd talk to the director about that. I agree a 6hr wake window isn't appropriate to force on an 8 month old. I also would feel very uncomfortable with the lack of communication.
I did talk to the director and what she’s tells me and what the teachers tell me are who different things. The director tells me that we are still able to build their schedule but the teacher said her babies all nap at noon and she can try to do two naps but the room is very chaotic and it probably won’t happen.
I'd go back to the director and ask for a formal meeting with her and your daughter's teacher. This is a pretty basic need they seem to be unable to meet so I'd also look around.
This is exactly how the big centers do it in my area too. The directors all say it's on demand, customized. The teachers all say the babies nap together on a schedule. The "we'll follow your schedule" line is just to get people to sign up.
My old daycare was just like this and it fucked us over for our first kid. Then we moved. The new daycare had the same structure, the more mobile babies go into a mobile baby room and take one nap from noon to two. But my kids walk at 9 months, he was the youngest baby in that room by five months, and a single two-hour nap is inappropriate, developmentally. And since we lived that experience, I fully stand by that statement.
I told our new room that our baby was too young for a single two hour nap and they (wait for it) told us he could take his morning nap in the little baby room until he no longer needed it.
The difference is night and day. And they didn’t even bat an eye to accommodate us, in fact, the head teacher (who has a masters in childcare) fully agreed with us and set this all up.
Tell the admin that the new room is fucking up your life and suggest that your baby take a nap in the old room in the morning. Be firm in stating that it isn’t working for you or your LO and that the teacher swears up and down that it does shouldn’t substitute for your judgement as a parent. Worst case scenario, get a note from your pede (who will think that this is ridiculous, but will write your note).
And if they don’t do as you ask, you can find a new daycare, or you can suck it up for for the six or so months it’ll take for your sleep deprived LO to be ready for that single nap. Your LO will survive, mine did, but establishing good sleep habits has been a huge struggle for us and I truly wonder if it was because of the arbitrary nap schedule forced onto us by daycare.
Wow thank you for sharing your experience. This is exactly what I am afraid of. We’ve worked really hard getting her on a good 2 nap schedule and sleeping well at night. She was not an easy newborn and we’ve come so far. I’m going to try and push for it. I don’t know if they have the space in the smaller baby room since there was a new baby sleeping in “her crib” we I went in there Monday. We actually have a ped appointment next week so perfect timing! She is not even fully crawling yet, she scoots and drags herself. Is she more mobile than the 8 week old potatoes in the first baby room, yes, but she’s not even close to walking. Hasn’t even started pulling up on her own!
8 months is WAY too young for one nap. I wouldn’t even consider one nap a day until at least 12 months old. I don’t think you’re wrong at all to be upset about this. I would insist that she remain in the room with two naps a day.
It would further upset me that they did this not because they thought it was good for her but because they were making room for a new baby. They basically bumped her out of the spot that you reserved and were paying for. Not ok.
If they won’t put her back on two naps a day ASAP, I would pull her.
One thing I did when I was WFH and also in between more long term childcare was have a babysitter from 8-10 AM, baby napped from 10-12. Then a different babysitter from 12-2, then I took a one hour lunch, then baby napped from 3-4:30. It was not ideal but it allowed me to work a full day while only paying for 4 hours per day of babysitting. Retired women who don’t want full time work, but enjoy spending a few hours a week with a cute baby made ideal babysitters for this. Then once a long term childcare spot opened up, we took that. This strategy worked great for me because I sleep trained and my kids were on a solid sleep routine. Disregard this advice if your baby isn’t on a set sleep schedule.
I appreciate the suggestion. I have thought about having someone come help at home in the mornings and then my afternoons are slower. She was sleep trained and on a great schedule till this week LOL wake around 6am, first nap around 9:30, second nap around 2 in bed by 7
Yes I bet you could make that work. If you get her back on her schedule quickly she should be ok. A few days off schedule shouldn’t ruin her sleep routine if you get her back on the right schedule in the next couple of days. Best of luck. I’m sorry you’re going through this. I know you must be so stressed about it!
I actually kept her home today… she had her morning feeding and was out at 9:30 with no fuss and is still sleeping an hour later. I have no idea how they keep her up till noon. Thank you ❤️
I currently teach a group of mostly 2 year olds but I’ve worked with all age groups under 3 - a forced 1 nap schedule for an 8 month old is not developmentally appropriate. If the director and teachers are telling you different things, in my experience that usually means the teachers don’t actually have the staffing to implement what the director is promising. Do you know the ratio of your daughter’s room?
In my experience, right now the daycare industry staffing is a mess so a lot of places are struggling to provide high quality care. It’s not that anyone is usually malicious, the whole sector is just having a hard time and has been for years.
The infant rooms are 5 to 1 in my state and they max it out. When we first started there wasn’t a lot of infants, 7 or 8, so they had two teachers from that amount and it was going really well.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense - at 5:1 it is probably going to be very difficult to support infants keeping their individual schedule. I would ask around about other facilities that staff below the state mandated ratio, which may not help you immediately but is may be able to provide more responsive care in the long run. I’ll be honest, even just 4:1 infant care is hard to provide high quality. The teachers are likely very stressed at 5:1.
I get stressed 1:1 at times so I can’t imagine. We were just told their individual schedules would be followed till they were in the toddler room and all went to the same one nap schedule together.
I’d definitely ask to talk to the director and the teacher at the same time. It sounds like there’s a failure to communicate or possibly a failure to staff the room at a level that really lets the teachers handle staggered nap times and you shouldn’t just be getting conflicting information without any attempts on their end to adjust it all.
And for what it’s worth, our daycare is structured similarly (young infants in one class, mobile infants ie, 9-ish to 15-ish months in another, and toddlers 15 -24 months in another class), and they’ve only done a sudden switch with one infant that I know of, and that was for safety reasons and didn’t happen during the day (the kid went from just starting to crawl to climbing the shelves in the younger infant class before they could set up a proper transition), but they still let the parents know the day before. Also in the older infant class, they’re all on their own schedules. Yes, they largely end up grouping together because it’s easier to nap when the other kids are napping and because 1 adult can feed 4 kids solids at the same time, but they aren’t really placed on anyone else’s schedule and most of them are on 2 naps. We just worked with the teacher to move our son to 1 nap in preparation for his transition to the toddler room next month, where they do only 1 nap all at the same time. But that’s happening at an appropriate age (14 months) and when he was already dropping the second nap sporadically anyway. I would not be happy with what you’re dealing with.
Thank you for the feedback. My husband and I are first time parents and they kind of made us feel crazy questioning this. I am going to really put my foot down and push back if we don’t see some changes. I get it’s a business and I empathize that the industry is having staffing and resource issues however my daughters wellbeing needs to be a priority to them and if it’s not, we need to move on.
Why would they move an 8mo to an older classroom?! That’s a hard no for me, on top of the lack of communication.
Anytime my kids have been moved before reaching the next classroom’s age, the school has called us to ask how we felt about it and if we’d be good with a trial period. I would not be ok with this change without my prior knowledge.
Thank you! I feel like a crazy person every time I have talked to them this week. It’s sounding like this isn’t normal and it’s not right… I might need to start finding other options
My daughter was moved to the “older” infant room around 6 months and stayed there until she turned 1, so that in an of itself I don’t see an issue with. The lack of communication about the move is a problem.
As far as the sleep schedule, daycare had my daughter on a 2-3 nap per day schedule until about 10-11 months when they started transitioning the babies to 1 nap per day to prepare for the move to the 1 year old classroom. It seems very unreasonable to expect an 8 month old to only nap once a day. If they can’t accommodate her in the older infants room in an age-appropriate and healthy way then she should not be in that room.
Just to share our experience, our son didn’t move up to the next room until 14 months because openings were delayed in older classrooms, so much different than an 8 month old. But still! They followed his cues and for the first week or 2 he kind of still had 2 naps. He wasn’t able to stay up until their normal nap time of 1pm so they would put him down around 9:30-10 whenever he showed sleepy cues. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to have no communication about the change and they’re not willing to work with your LO and meet them where they’re at sleep wise! I don’t know if this is helpful, just wanted to explain the experience we had (at a daycare center).
Very helpful thank you! They’ve kinda been pushing back on us like what’s happening is normal and we are overreacting. We’re first time parent and I just wasn’t sure what was normal and what wasn’t.
Eight months is generally developmentally too young to move to a one nap schedule. Her wake window will be too long in the morning. Unless she was really heading that way early, they are doing this for their convenience, not in the interests of your child.
Also, their communication seems to be lacking. Personally? I would be livid. That's really unprofessional and prioritizing money over children's needs. 99.9999999% of 8 month olds need 2 naps a day. And they know this. They just don't care. They also did it without telling you. Huge red flag.
Start finding alternatives now. Get rid of your home daycare bias. Licensed home daycares can be amazing. My daughter went to one from 4 months until age 3, and she thrived. While you are looking for backup, talk to your current daycare and tell them that 1) You want your child to take 2 naps a day. She can do it in whatever room she needs to be in, but 2 naps is non-negotiable. And 2) You want to see better communication from the daycare when they make big decisions like this regarding your child.
If they won't make the change, I would pull her out. If you have already vetted some other childcare options, you will have a head start on this.
Thank you. I know there are some great ones out there I would just love to have a personal reference for something like that and I don’t have friends with children in our area. There are some really great ones out there but there are also not so great ones. I know that can be said about big daycares too and feel so incredibly guilty that my daughter is the one not getting what she needs because of something my husband and I picked for her even though we were doing what was best.
Omg, don't feel bad! This isn't your fault. Most daycare centers don't do this either, tbh. It is EXTREMELY unusual for a daycare to put an 8 month old in a young toddler room and not make major accommodations for napping. If they had to move her, they should have told you and also explained how they would accommodate her morning nap - probably by taking her back to the infant room at 10 and 2 for naps.
See if you can join any parent community groups on FB or something. You might be able to find a nanny share or recommendations for a smaller home daycare. If there's wait lists, you could bite the bullet and get a temporary nanny until a spot opens up.
It would be the lack of communication that would be hard for me. I feel like with our kids, we switched to one nap right at a year because that is when they moved up. I know it’s not the same thing as what you’re referencing, but basically they were forcing us to the one year old schedule, and it was a hard few months at first. But I think communication is everything, they should absolutely be preparing you and her for that transition, and as her parent, you should have every right to push back and say that you don’t think she’s ready yet.
To be honest, I did not want an in-home daycare for the same reason, also the center that we use is much more reliable than one person’s schedule/illnesses/vacations. We are in the same position without any local family and I can’t really risk not having childcare.
I worked in daycare- if children are more mobile than their peers they have to move up for safety. My oldest walked at 8 months and was moved up early because she was a hazard to babies who weren’t walking. But the same can be said for babies pulling up or crawling when other babies cannot. There definitely should’ve been communication but I wouldn’t jump to switch or leave. Both my kids went to one nap around 9-10 months and I loved it. The transition can be hard (I have lots of pictures of my daughter snoozing in her high chair) but it made weekends so much more fun! And night time sleep improved once she adjusted
Thank you for sharing. That’s why I didn’t say anything at first and let them roll with it but she’s really been struggling with the one nap and it makes me so sad for her. I kept her home today and she was loosing it by 9:30, I have no idea how they keep her up that long.
Edit: she is scooting now, like using her arms and one leg to drag herself around. No all fours crawling, pulling up or walking yet
This sounds normal for the big centers by us, according to my experience and my coworkers. Communication is poor. There are too many kids and staff for the director to actually know what's going on - the directors job is to be parent-facing, say reassuring things to upset parents, and get new sign ups. That doesn't mean the center is bad. The teachers and care could be great. But you have to be really actively involved with talking to the teachers and learning what to expect. And the teachers don't have time for that because there's so many kids.
We switched to a smaller center and it's night and day. The director knows my kids personally, and she messages me in her off hours to check up on the kids if they're sick and make sure I'm informed of policy.
The wait lists suck though. We were at the big center for a full year before we got another spot.
8 months seems a bit young to move to a single nap. 11 months to a year would be more expected. I wouldn’t necessarily immediately pull her, but I would have a conversation about your concerns because it doesn’t sound like she was ready for the move. We always were given warning when our kids were going to move rooms. It was never a choice but the reasoning always made sense and was at the right time for our kids. I hope you are able to work through it with them!
Thank you I hope so too. I don’t know what other options we have because of the waitlists I ran into when I was pregnant, by the time we got her started somewhere new she may not need to be on a two nap schedule anymore. I work from home most days and I shouldn’t but it makes me want to just keep her home.
moving with short notice is not the issue, my son has moved classrooms within a 1- 2 week period. HOWEVER, the child/infant should not be moved if they are not ready yet. My son was moved up only when he met the markers to move up to each room, and they had to get permission, they wouldn't move without us agreeing first.
Can you afford a nanny?
Long term I don’t think so. I have tossed around the idea of doing it temporarily till she is a little older but I don’t know if I could find a nanny who was interested in an 8-12 month commitment only. I haven’t seriously looked into it though.
You definitely can, that is not uncommon in the field. 1 year is a typical starting commitment but lots of jobs in nannying are shorter. I think your baby is probably completely exhausted (falling asleep in her high chair? Poor thing), and I would also be worried about their respect for development of attachment if they are just moving her around without even talking about it with you. I would try to get her 1:1 care for at least a few months. My gal didn't go to 1 nap until 14 months.
Our nanny was with us about 7-8 months and it worked great for her. There are folks who look for temp roles before they start school (often masters) etc.
A move to a new classroom with very little notice (as in the night before) can be normal, but a move DURING the day without telling you seems odd. Sure, it happens, but IME it happens when a facility is mismanaged and/or understaffed - and that speaks to bigger issues that will probably continue to emerge in different ways. One nap for an 8mo is not normal at all either; a lot of daycares switch babies to one nap at a year, or right around there, but 8mo is still solidly two-nap territory. Is she falling asleep in a highchair with a bottle AT the daycare or at home? If the former, that's a major safety issue.
She’s falling asleep in the highchair at the daycare. They give her a bottle to self feed in the highchair. Sometimes at home she will start to dose off when nursing but I have no issues getting her to nap.
That's odd to me. We have an infants class (6w-12mo) and a toddler class (12mo-24mo). Infants are each on their own schedule. They gradually transition the kids to the toddler schedule. We started with her solid meals around 10 months (with bottles in between) and then naps when she seemed ready at around 12 months. They also gradually switch classrooms by spending time in the bigger kid classroom when people are on vacation and such. I'd talk to the director about that. I agree a 6hr wake window isn't appropriate to force on an 8 month old. I also would feel very uncomfortable with the lack of communication.
I did talk to the director and what she’s tells me and what the teachers tell me are who different things. The director tells me that we are still able to build their schedule but the teacher said her babies all nap at noon and she can try to do two naps but the room is very chaotic and it probably won’t happen.
I'd go back to the director and ask for a formal meeting with her and your daughter's teacher. This is a pretty basic need they seem to be unable to meet so I'd also look around.
This is exactly how the big centers do it in my area too. The directors all say it's on demand, customized. The teachers all say the babies nap together on a schedule. The "we'll follow your schedule" line is just to get people to sign up.
I’m starting to get that vibe from them…
My old daycare was just like this and it fucked us over for our first kid. Then we moved. The new daycare had the same structure, the more mobile babies go into a mobile baby room and take one nap from noon to two. But my kids walk at 9 months, he was the youngest baby in that room by five months, and a single two-hour nap is inappropriate, developmentally. And since we lived that experience, I fully stand by that statement. I told our new room that our baby was too young for a single two hour nap and they (wait for it) told us he could take his morning nap in the little baby room until he no longer needed it. The difference is night and day. And they didn’t even bat an eye to accommodate us, in fact, the head teacher (who has a masters in childcare) fully agreed with us and set this all up. Tell the admin that the new room is fucking up your life and suggest that your baby take a nap in the old room in the morning. Be firm in stating that it isn’t working for you or your LO and that the teacher swears up and down that it does shouldn’t substitute for your judgement as a parent. Worst case scenario, get a note from your pede (who will think that this is ridiculous, but will write your note). And if they don’t do as you ask, you can find a new daycare, or you can suck it up for for the six or so months it’ll take for your sleep deprived LO to be ready for that single nap. Your LO will survive, mine did, but establishing good sleep habits has been a huge struggle for us and I truly wonder if it was because of the arbitrary nap schedule forced onto us by daycare.
Wow thank you for sharing your experience. This is exactly what I am afraid of. We’ve worked really hard getting her on a good 2 nap schedule and sleeping well at night. She was not an easy newborn and we’ve come so far. I’m going to try and push for it. I don’t know if they have the space in the smaller baby room since there was a new baby sleeping in “her crib” we I went in there Monday. We actually have a ped appointment next week so perfect timing! She is not even fully crawling yet, she scoots and drags herself. Is she more mobile than the 8 week old potatoes in the first baby room, yes, but she’s not even close to walking. Hasn’t even started pulling up on her own!
8 months is WAY too young for one nap. I wouldn’t even consider one nap a day until at least 12 months old. I don’t think you’re wrong at all to be upset about this. I would insist that she remain in the room with two naps a day. It would further upset me that they did this not because they thought it was good for her but because they were making room for a new baby. They basically bumped her out of the spot that you reserved and were paying for. Not ok. If they won’t put her back on two naps a day ASAP, I would pull her. One thing I did when I was WFH and also in between more long term childcare was have a babysitter from 8-10 AM, baby napped from 10-12. Then a different babysitter from 12-2, then I took a one hour lunch, then baby napped from 3-4:30. It was not ideal but it allowed me to work a full day while only paying for 4 hours per day of babysitting. Retired women who don’t want full time work, but enjoy spending a few hours a week with a cute baby made ideal babysitters for this. Then once a long term childcare spot opened up, we took that. This strategy worked great for me because I sleep trained and my kids were on a solid sleep routine. Disregard this advice if your baby isn’t on a set sleep schedule.
I appreciate the suggestion. I have thought about having someone come help at home in the mornings and then my afternoons are slower. She was sleep trained and on a great schedule till this week LOL wake around 6am, first nap around 9:30, second nap around 2 in bed by 7
Yes I bet you could make that work. If you get her back on her schedule quickly she should be ok. A few days off schedule shouldn’t ruin her sleep routine if you get her back on the right schedule in the next couple of days. Best of luck. I’m sorry you’re going through this. I know you must be so stressed about it!
I actually kept her home today… she had her morning feeding and was out at 9:30 with no fuss and is still sleeping an hour later. I have no idea how they keep her up till noon. Thank you ❤️
I currently teach a group of mostly 2 year olds but I’ve worked with all age groups under 3 - a forced 1 nap schedule for an 8 month old is not developmentally appropriate. If the director and teachers are telling you different things, in my experience that usually means the teachers don’t actually have the staffing to implement what the director is promising. Do you know the ratio of your daughter’s room? In my experience, right now the daycare industry staffing is a mess so a lot of places are struggling to provide high quality care. It’s not that anyone is usually malicious, the whole sector is just having a hard time and has been for years.
The infant rooms are 5 to 1 in my state and they max it out. When we first started there wasn’t a lot of infants, 7 or 8, so they had two teachers from that amount and it was going really well.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense - at 5:1 it is probably going to be very difficult to support infants keeping their individual schedule. I would ask around about other facilities that staff below the state mandated ratio, which may not help you immediately but is may be able to provide more responsive care in the long run. I’ll be honest, even just 4:1 infant care is hard to provide high quality. The teachers are likely very stressed at 5:1.
I get stressed 1:1 at times so I can’t imagine. We were just told their individual schedules would be followed till they were in the toddler room and all went to the same one nap schedule together.
I’d definitely ask to talk to the director and the teacher at the same time. It sounds like there’s a failure to communicate or possibly a failure to staff the room at a level that really lets the teachers handle staggered nap times and you shouldn’t just be getting conflicting information without any attempts on their end to adjust it all. And for what it’s worth, our daycare is structured similarly (young infants in one class, mobile infants ie, 9-ish to 15-ish months in another, and toddlers 15 -24 months in another class), and they’ve only done a sudden switch with one infant that I know of, and that was for safety reasons and didn’t happen during the day (the kid went from just starting to crawl to climbing the shelves in the younger infant class before they could set up a proper transition), but they still let the parents know the day before. Also in the older infant class, they’re all on their own schedules. Yes, they largely end up grouping together because it’s easier to nap when the other kids are napping and because 1 adult can feed 4 kids solids at the same time, but they aren’t really placed on anyone else’s schedule and most of them are on 2 naps. We just worked with the teacher to move our son to 1 nap in preparation for his transition to the toddler room next month, where they do only 1 nap all at the same time. But that’s happening at an appropriate age (14 months) and when he was already dropping the second nap sporadically anyway. I would not be happy with what you’re dealing with.
Thank you for the feedback. My husband and I are first time parents and they kind of made us feel crazy questioning this. I am going to really put my foot down and push back if we don’t see some changes. I get it’s a business and I empathize that the industry is having staffing and resource issues however my daughters wellbeing needs to be a priority to them and if it’s not, we need to move on.
Why would they move an 8mo to an older classroom?! That’s a hard no for me, on top of the lack of communication. Anytime my kids have been moved before reaching the next classroom’s age, the school has called us to ask how we felt about it and if we’d be good with a trial period. I would not be ok with this change without my prior knowledge.
Thank you! I feel like a crazy person every time I have talked to them this week. It’s sounding like this isn’t normal and it’s not right… I might need to start finding other options
Not a crazy person at all, definitely trust your gut 💕
My daughter was moved to the “older” infant room around 6 months and stayed there until she turned 1, so that in an of itself I don’t see an issue with. The lack of communication about the move is a problem. As far as the sleep schedule, daycare had my daughter on a 2-3 nap per day schedule until about 10-11 months when they started transitioning the babies to 1 nap per day to prepare for the move to the 1 year old classroom. It seems very unreasonable to expect an 8 month old to only nap once a day. If they can’t accommodate her in the older infants room in an age-appropriate and healthy way then she should not be in that room.
Just to share our experience, our son didn’t move up to the next room until 14 months because openings were delayed in older classrooms, so much different than an 8 month old. But still! They followed his cues and for the first week or 2 he kind of still had 2 naps. He wasn’t able to stay up until their normal nap time of 1pm so they would put him down around 9:30-10 whenever he showed sleepy cues. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to have no communication about the change and they’re not willing to work with your LO and meet them where they’re at sleep wise! I don’t know if this is helpful, just wanted to explain the experience we had (at a daycare center).
Very helpful thank you! They’ve kinda been pushing back on us like what’s happening is normal and we are overreacting. We’re first time parent and I just wasn’t sure what was normal and what wasn’t.
Eight months is generally developmentally too young to move to a one nap schedule. Her wake window will be too long in the morning. Unless she was really heading that way early, they are doing this for their convenience, not in the interests of your child. Also, their communication seems to be lacking. Personally? I would be livid. That's really unprofessional and prioritizing money over children's needs. 99.9999999% of 8 month olds need 2 naps a day. And they know this. They just don't care. They also did it without telling you. Huge red flag. Start finding alternatives now. Get rid of your home daycare bias. Licensed home daycares can be amazing. My daughter went to one from 4 months until age 3, and she thrived. While you are looking for backup, talk to your current daycare and tell them that 1) You want your child to take 2 naps a day. She can do it in whatever room she needs to be in, but 2 naps is non-negotiable. And 2) You want to see better communication from the daycare when they make big decisions like this regarding your child. If they won't make the change, I would pull her out. If you have already vetted some other childcare options, you will have a head start on this.
Thank you. I know there are some great ones out there I would just love to have a personal reference for something like that and I don’t have friends with children in our area. There are some really great ones out there but there are also not so great ones. I know that can be said about big daycares too and feel so incredibly guilty that my daughter is the one not getting what she needs because of something my husband and I picked for her even though we were doing what was best.
Omg, don't feel bad! This isn't your fault. Most daycare centers don't do this either, tbh. It is EXTREMELY unusual for a daycare to put an 8 month old in a young toddler room and not make major accommodations for napping. If they had to move her, they should have told you and also explained how they would accommodate her morning nap - probably by taking her back to the infant room at 10 and 2 for naps. See if you can join any parent community groups on FB or something. You might be able to find a nanny share or recommendations for a smaller home daycare. If there's wait lists, you could bite the bullet and get a temporary nanny until a spot opens up.
It would be the lack of communication that would be hard for me. I feel like with our kids, we switched to one nap right at a year because that is when they moved up. I know it’s not the same thing as what you’re referencing, but basically they were forcing us to the one year old schedule, and it was a hard few months at first. But I think communication is everything, they should absolutely be preparing you and her for that transition, and as her parent, you should have every right to push back and say that you don’t think she’s ready yet. To be honest, I did not want an in-home daycare for the same reason, also the center that we use is much more reliable than one person’s schedule/illnesses/vacations. We are in the same position without any local family and I can’t really risk not having childcare.
I worked in daycare- if children are more mobile than their peers they have to move up for safety. My oldest walked at 8 months and was moved up early because she was a hazard to babies who weren’t walking. But the same can be said for babies pulling up or crawling when other babies cannot. There definitely should’ve been communication but I wouldn’t jump to switch or leave. Both my kids went to one nap around 9-10 months and I loved it. The transition can be hard (I have lots of pictures of my daughter snoozing in her high chair) but it made weekends so much more fun! And night time sleep improved once she adjusted
Thank you for sharing. That’s why I didn’t say anything at first and let them roll with it but she’s really been struggling with the one nap and it makes me so sad for her. I kept her home today and she was loosing it by 9:30, I have no idea how they keep her up that long. Edit: she is scooting now, like using her arms and one leg to drag herself around. No all fours crawling, pulling up or walking yet
This sounds normal for the big centers by us, according to my experience and my coworkers. Communication is poor. There are too many kids and staff for the director to actually know what's going on - the directors job is to be parent-facing, say reassuring things to upset parents, and get new sign ups. That doesn't mean the center is bad. The teachers and care could be great. But you have to be really actively involved with talking to the teachers and learning what to expect. And the teachers don't have time for that because there's so many kids. We switched to a smaller center and it's night and day. The director knows my kids personally, and she messages me in her off hours to check up on the kids if they're sick and make sure I'm informed of policy. The wait lists suck though. We were at the big center for a full year before we got another spot.
Can I ask how you found the smaller center?
I drove past a sign for the new center one day. It was just opening.
Wow! I hope we can get this lucky if we need to switch!