He Said, She Said

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It never fails. Whenever my husband is home over the weekend and the time comes for my son to wildly protest nap time as he usually does, my husband waltzes into our son’s bedroom and works whatever magic he works to get my son to fall asleep. During the week nap time is very hit or miss within our house - my daughter gave up naps around the time she turned two years old and I think my son is readying himself to stop napping too - so if my son doesn’t want to nap I usually give up after about an hour of trying to get him to go down.

I’ve tried everything. I sternly tell him to go to sleep. I try to ease him into a nap with a song and a back rub. I threaten him, I beg him, I whine at him. It’s all been done. I’ve just found that if the boy isn’t going to nap, nothing I say is going to change his mind.

Then here comes my husband, having successfully convinced our son to nap while I stand there with a look of bewilderment on my face because I didn’t think a nap was going to happen. My husband says the same thing every time:

“You know, all I do is very sternly tell him that it’s time to go to sleep.”

He says this as though I never thought to try that, and also as though he’s never revealed this secret to me before. Every time, my response is the same:

“I try that too, and it doesn’t work.”

Maybe there is just something special about the way Daddy says it, or maybe there is something magical about having Daddy - who is usually at work for naptime - put him down for his nap. Either way, I can’t help but feel like a little bit of a failure every time my husband does something that I should be able to do. The feelings of failure, however, are usually outweighed by the sheer gratitude that someone got my son to finally go to sleep.