A 5-year-old girl discovered a cruel reality of kindergarten: No naps.
“It was a shock,” her mom, Gimeka Gentry, tells TODAY.com.
Gentry recorded her daughter McKenzie’s rude awakening after picking her up from her first day of kindergarten in South Carolina earlier this month. In a TikTok video recorded in the car and posted by Gentry’s sister Appolonia Maxton, the little girl is appalled by her rigorous schedule.
“I didn’t take a nap at kindergarten,” McKenzie told Gentry in the video, which has more than one million views.
McKenzie said she double checked with her new teacher and was informed about the no-nap policy.
“We didn’t take a nap — I was so tired, I was trying to go to sleep in PE,” McKenzie said in the video, adding, “I couldn’t take a nap anywhere.”
McKenzie asked a logical question: “Why did you sign me up for kindergarten?”
McKenzie somehow found the energy for an after-school trip to McDonald’s — though she fell asleep eating her French fries.
McKenzie got all the sympathy on TikTok.
- “As a kindergarten teacher, I agree, girl.”
- “This baby is not asking for much.”
- “She is not playing about nap time.”
- “Same, girl. I am a third-grade teacher.”
- “Ya’ll interfering with her beauty sleep.”
- “I’m in college and I’m asking the same questions.”
- “She is devastated.”
Gentry tells TODAY.com that McKenzie had once refused to nap at preschool. Still, says her mom, she expected naps to resume in kindergarten.
McKenzie, who is the youngest of four children, is hilarious, according to her aunt.
“You can have a conversation with her and she’ll have you laughing the whole time,” says Maxton. “Kids say the darndest things.”
Do Kindergarteners Need Naps?
Children between the ages of 3 and 5 need anywhere from 10 to 13 hours of sleep, including naps, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“In kindergarten, we’re trying to shift sleep from the classroom into the bedroom and focus on a solid night of sleep,” pediatrician Dr. Heather Felton tells TODAY.com. “Kids usually drop their afternoon naps, on average, anywhere from ages 3 to 5, but there is a range ... and that’s OK.”
Felton says that leading up to kindergarten, parents can start inching their children toward earlier bedtimes; once school starts, she recommends establishing “quiet time” in the afternoons. If kids fall asleep then, that’s OK, she adds.
Kindergarten is an exhausting transition — kids may be at school longer than they were at preschool. They’re learning independence skills in the bathroom, and at mealtime, patience and turn-taking and the practice of community building.
“I don’t blame anyone for being shocked by it,” says Felton.
