Mom expects 5-year-old daughter to sleep from 3 PM until morning without dinner, gets angry when aunt gives her an apple at 7 PM: ‘Who’s the parent?’

Naps are one of those things that you can’t force a kid to do indefinitely. There are times when it is developmentally appropriate to sleep for most of the day and times when napping for a couple of hours is suitable, but 5-year-olds are definitely not in that age group. Some people nap for an hour a day for their entire lives, and don’t have any problem with that. My mom went through a napping phase in college, and she says it was incredibly detrimental to her health, happiness, and productivity. 

The most important thing about napping is to find the perfect amount of time. You can’t really do much with a 10-minute nap, nor should you nap for four hours and expect to feel refreshed afterward. The sweet spot is 30 minutes when you’re in a pinch, to 2 hours when you’ve got time to spare and energy to gain. Anything more than that is going to derail your day, and you might as well stick it out for a couple of hours and go to bed early instead. 

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