I took a nap this afternoon. It was interrupted twice in quick succession by Link who was asking permission to play a video game and then to play a different video game. I don’t remember the words of my response, but apparently they were sufficiently affirmative that he went away happy. My half-asleep brain pondered the occurrence with a grumpy tone of voice. Does no one respect my need for sleep? The kids will see Dad asleep and tip toe out of the room, but have no compunction at all about waking me from a sound sleep to ask their questions. This is true even when their Dad is around. Our kids have been known to walk out of the room where Howard is in order to wake me up and ask a question.
The simple solution would be for me to lock the door. Faced with a locked door, the kids would go find their Dad to get their problems solved. I don’t lock the door when I lay down for a nap. Half the time I don’t even close the door. To close and lock the door would be a declaration that the next period of time is designated for a nap. Somehow in my mind I’m only sneaking a nap. I still feel on-duty, so I leave the door open so I can still hear and respond to crises. It is silly, because unconscious people are not very watchful. When the kids were little I was clearly on duty and I didn’t sleep unless they were also sleeping or someone else was specifically assigned to watch them. Somewhere the lines got blurred.
After the interruptions I got a solid hour of sleep, so my nap was far from ruined. This is usually the case, which is part of why I’ve never taken steps to train the kids not to wake me. It is important for me to be available to them as much as I can, because sometimes I have to work.