Here is what I have learned:
Laws regulating naps tend to be extremely vague and subject to interpretation. This means that implementation will vary county to county and school to school. The spirit of the law is reasonable: children should be provided with the opportunity to nap. This means, don't keep them up because you do not have the space for cots. Good idea, right? In most preschools in Los Angeles, this means a special nap room where kids who still nap go to in order to rest. This is exactly what happened at our old school. As the child grew older and consistently failed to fall asleep, he was returned to the main room to continue with activities.
In orange county, the busy-bodies that have the power to fine preschools have declared that, according to the Operations VP at LePort, "If an inspector sees a three-year-old out of bed, we will get fined!" What is this, Argus Filch of Hogwartz?
Still, some schools have managed to get around it. In the ten mile radius of our new home, I have found a wide variety of implementations, from a mandatory one-and-a-half hour in-bed period for every child under four, to the basically sane approach of Monarch Bay Montessori, where children who do not nap continue quietly working with Montessori materials in the same room where their peers are napping. Some of the non-nappers actually spend part of the time helping the younger children fall asleep! (How delightful to watch them as they stroke their classmates' hair, murmur lullabies and settle them in!)
Needless to say, this is where my daughter goes to school now. Montessori is a child-driven educational philosophy. How destructive it is to the entire environment that the children are forced to stay in bed when their bodies do not require it! To all those schools I spoke to I say - come and look at the successful classroom that Monarch Bay has put together! You probably have a lot more to learn than nap time. Their attitude toward the children precludes forcing them to nap, but it naturally goes far beyond that. I've been delighted with our experience so far, with how smoothly the adjustment has gone for my child and her peers - compared to what I have seen elsewhere.
And to the parents who are invariably finding my last blog post on the subject of naps as they desperately search for information about what to do, I advise: keep looking. You will find a school with a sane practice - and you will likely find that it is a better school in most other ways as well. Best of luck to you!
