13/11/2025
I remember the afternoon little lie down to rest and daydream at primary school - it was a shock when it didn't carry on in Junior school. There's so much work focus and stimulation in the lives of our children in school all day now. No space to rest and dream or learn to meditate and regulate ones emotions and reset ones nervous system.
In the 1950s, every kindergarten classroom had a daily ritual you could set your watch by—one that's almost disappeared today.
After songs and crayons and circle time, after graham crackers and milk boxes, the teacher would dim the lights.
A record would drop onto the turntable—something soft, something gentle.
And twenty little bodies would stretch out on striped mats or colorful rugs, shoes nudged under small cots, thumb-worn blankets pulled up to chins.
A whole classroom exhaling at once.
Naptime.
For millions of children who grew up in the 1950s, '60s, and early '70s, this was as fundamental to kindergarten as finger paint and learning the alphabet.
It wasn't just babysitting or downtime.
It was part of the lesson plan.
Educators believed that structured quiet helped children grow—making space for feelings to settle, imaginations to wander, and small hearts to reset before the afternoon rush of counting games and building blocks.
The science supported it. Young children's bodies and brains were still developing. Rest wasn't a luxury; it was a developmental necessity.
Teachers became guardians of calm.
Soft voices. Steady footsteps moving between rows of sleeping children. Sometimes a gentle story read in near-whisper. A hand smoothing a blanket. A lighthouse in low light.
For many kids, this was the only stillness in a busy day—a pause between lunchboxes and hopscotch, between learning letters and learning how to share.
Some children actually slept, exhausted from morning play and the overwhelming newness of school.
Others lay quietly, watching dust motes dance in the sliver of sunlight between curtains, lost in the kind of daydreaming that only happens when you're five and the world hasn't taught you to hurry yet.
Even the kids who hated naptime—the fidgeters, the wide-awake ones who stared at the ceiling counting tiles—learned something valuable:
Sometimes you have to be still, even when you don't feel like it. Sometimes rest is part of the work.
But by the 1970s and '80s, something shifted.
Academic pressure increased. Kindergarten stopped being about socialization and play and started being about "kindergarten readiness" and pre-reading skills.
Schedules tightened. Testing began earlier. Parents wanted to make sure their children weren't "falling behind."
Naptime started to feel like wasted time.
One by one, school districts eliminated mandatory rest periods from kindergarten. The mats got rolled up and stored away. The record players were replaced by overhead projectors, then computers, then tablets.
By the 1990s, naptime had largely disappeared from public kindergarten classrooms, surviving mainly in preschools and full-day programs for the very young.
Today, most kindergarteners spend their entire day in structured learning—reading groups, math centers, computer time, recess (if they're lucky), lunch, and more instruction.
No pause. No quiet. No permission to just… breathe.
And we wonder why anxiety in children has skyrocketed.
The memory lingers for those who experienced it:
Rows of striped mats. The scratchy sound of a turntable's needle finding its groove. The smell of that one kid's blanket that went home for washing maybe twice a year. The magic of being told it's okay—expected, even—to close your eyes and rest in the middle of the day.
For those of us who remember, naptime wasn't just about sleep.
It was about learning that rest is valuable. That quiet has purpose. That you don't have to be productive every single moment.
It was a lesson we didn't know we were learning until we grew up into a world that never stops, never slows, and makes us feel guilty for needing to pause.
To every parent who remembers kindergarten naptime: Your kids probably don't have it. And they're being asked to function at full speed all day, every day.
To teachers fighting to keep rest and play in early childhood education: You're not being soft. You're honoring what science has always known—young children need downtime to develop properly.
To anyone who feels guilty for needing rest: We used to teach five-year-olds that pausing was part of learning. Maybe we should remember that lesson.
To those who think childhood is "too easy" these days: Today's kindergarteners have more structured academic time than 1950s third-graders. We've eliminated the pauses.
Maybe that's the lesson worth keeping.
Not that children should sleep away half their school day—but that rest, quiet, and unstructured time aren't indulgent.
They're essential.
Even big kids need a little naptime now and then.
Even adults do.
We used to know that.
We used to build it into the day, right between morning songs and afternoon play.
We dimmed the lights, put on a record, and gave twenty little people permission to stop trying so hard.
Maybe it's time we remembered how.
