How I Got My Grandkids to Take Afternoon Naps — Daily
They did it with nary a complaint, but with lots of boisterous laughter and fun!
My grandkids are 5 years old and 8 years old. Both boys.
Am pretty sure you can imagine how it is to have two little boys cooped up in the house during a long lockdown. I won’t belabor the point though. One word is enough to describe that situation — chaos!
Well, their mother - my daughter - asked me for just an hour of respite after lunch, so she can at least put her legs up, read a favorite book, or do other things that mothers needed to do to make the house livable and food ready for each meal.
And so promptly at 1:00 pm, the kids and I would troop to my room.
Grandma, please tell us a story
With the three of us squeezed like sardines on my not-so-big bed, I would oblige them with a story. It didn’t matter what kind of story — Bible stories, Aesop fables, fairy tales, Greek mythology, true-to-life miracle stories, stories I spun from movies of long ago, and even stories I read in Facebook (which I modify freely to suit their fragile hearts and inquisitive minds) — they just loved listening to a story.
But the result was always the reverse. Instead of them, I ended up the one napping!
Then one day, I got it. I finally discovered how to master the art of putting my little boys to sleep for half an hour — every afternoon during the early, scary months of the COVID 19 pandemic.
The storyteller in me
How did I do it? Well, it was a stroke of pure genius, lol!
You see, after the first three weeks, I run out of stories! And that was when the magic began!
With a little imagination and lots of flair and dramatics, I started to weave one episode per day of a grand, exciting adventure story — their adventure story.
I got them to make and meet virtual friends — little boys and girls and pet dogs and cats -who would join them in their wild escapades, be it at a forest, river, or the sea, or wherever my fancy would take them.
I even took them to the moon and back, together with another friend- a robot- in an alien spaceship. It was extremely funny, as I didn’t realize my boys are budding computer geeks while my knowledge of robotics and spacecraft is Jurassic, hahaha!
How I put them to sleep
How they loved every crazily funny adventure — that lasted for only 30 minutes.
And the clincher? Each episode ends when somebody accidentally drinks or eats something with an apple in it. Because then everybody would fall asleep! A la Sleeping Beauty!
We loved this part the most! How the boys and their friends would try to prevent anyone from drinking or eating the sleeping fruit was always a riot. But since I was the storyteller, I always won!
I bet the neighbors could hear the shrieks and laughter from my room and wondered what might be happening.
A little later, silence. For half an hour.
Since then, I never failed to enjoy my own 30 minutes quiet, peaceful nap every afternoon! So did my adorable grandkids!
Now I have a problem
Am writing a children’s book or rather re-creating my grandkids' pandemic adventure story.
But, I realized an ‘epic’ story, can only be told once. Something is missing, the second time around.
It could be the cramped bed setting, the compelling need to be indoor in a lockdown, or, perhaps, the innocence of two little kids now fast fading in the busyness of their Roblox and Minecraft creations.
I might need to read up on metaverse very soon. To catch up with them, if I can.
Thank you for reading my story. You can join Medium and enjoy unlimited access to great writings from thousands of writers, by using my referral link here.
