Why "just rest quietly" rarely works

The nap disappears somewhere around age three or four, and it rarely announces itself. One week your child sleeps through the afternoon. The next, they lie in bed chatting to their stuffed animals for forty-five minutes and then pop up ready for anything. The nap is gone. The need for an afternoon reset is not, and neither is yours.

The 3pm meltdown is biology.

You know the scene. They walk through the door and immediately fall apart. Backpack on the floor. Shoes kicked off in opposite directions. Tears about a snack. Tears about someone being mean at recess. Tears about nothing you can identify.

I drove eight hours alone with two kids under five and two dogs. Here's what broke.

I want to tell you a story about the day I became a hypocrite.

Atlanta to St. Louis. Just me, both kids, both dogs, and an SUV packed with everything we needed and several things we didn't. My first time making this drive alone with both of them. I'd planned ahead, broken it into two days, mapped out the stops. I thought I was ready.