Quite Time

I started quite time at our house and I absolutely love it as does Savannah. Some days she even asks me if its quiet time yet. Her quiet time starts when Olivia takes her afternoon nap (yes Olivia still takes 2 naps and sleeps from 7:30pm-8/8:30am, I know that I am quite lucky with this.) Anyway back to Savannah while I’m putting Olivia down for her nap, Savannah goes to the bathroom and gets in her bed. She then has to stay on her bed for 45 minutes. I give her a drink and some books that she can look at, if she gets up at all I add 5 more minutes to her time. I have come to love this and have questioned why I didn’t start this sooner. I honestly think Savannah wouldn’t have taken so well to quite time if I had started sooner. Savannah needs to understand why something is happening and she needs to feel in control like its her doing and she is finally at an age where I can reason with her. The way I explained quite time is its not nap time and she does not have to take a nap (at least 2 times a week she does end up falling asleep.) She is allowed to have her door open but I do close the door to the girls hallway so some of the noise I make is muffled. I tell her what I’ll be doing so that she knows I might be making noise and I tell her when the timer goes off I will come and get her and that she will then be able to get out of bed. I tried to make quite time not seem like a punishment and I also explained that mommy is having her quite time too. I rarely have to add more time, sometimes I do have to remind Savannah to whisper because she’s reading her stories to loud. Overall quite time has been a huge success and it allows me to clean up from the morning of playing and I can usually work on a project, catch up online, or read a book. Also it calms Savannah down for the afternoon and gets her ready for the evening. I love quite time.