gan or no gan | Imamother

amother

Thu, Apr 26 2012, 4:31 am

I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with my almost two year old. I had a very hard first year + with her and despite strong reservations started her in a gan very part time (couple hours, couple days a week) at about a yr and 1/2, just to recover a bit, get to dr appts etc. She loves it and I let her go the full day (8-1) those two days. An opportunity came up to do some helpful job training 3 mornings a week and (again with reservations) I took it so she now goes three mornings.
I noticed during Pesach her napping and sleep improved tremendously. It has always been hard, but usually a good napper, except that they had been reducing over the past six months to just an hour a day. I thought she was growing out of them, but after a week they were back up to 2+hrs and much better sleeping at night.
So now I feel like I should keep her out of gan, or maybe go back to a few hours over 2 days. It seems too much stimulation, or change in her schedule or whatever has been affecting her sleep.
I'm really torn. My husband thinks I need her to be out and work on my future (although we have no plans to have me go back to work yet). I feel if I'm not expecting (and it's not clear if I will due to certain issues) I should take the time to care for her now, and can always work on everything else in a year or two when she's in full time. When she was going 2 days I filled the rest of her time with activities for her, and of course household stuff.
any thoughts to help me work this out would be appreciated.