Studies show that children’s sleep and rest is central to their learning and development but also to their health. But how easy is it when you have a range of children’s different needs to meet and parents’ wishes regarding their child’s rest arrangements at preschool? The interest of this study is children’s rest while awake, but we see sleep time as included in this focus and as affecting children’s needs to rest. In this study, preschool teachers’ interpretations of and strategies for children’s awake rest in preschool are presented. The result shows that the preschool teacher’s understanding is that rest leads to recovery, learning and development. They seek to develop a secure relationship with the children to accommodate their needs. There are many ways to create opportunities for children to rest while awake, including routine and responsive practice. Results show that clarifying pedagogy and individually adapted rest practices are central strategies that the preschool teacher’s use. The practice of awake rest in preschool entails many factors that affect children’s opportunity to recover. One significant factor is an increasing pressure preschool teachers to conduct an educationthat prepares children for the coming school years. In the Swedish national curriculum for preschool, care is a central goal to attain. The critical issue is that care for children’s rest has become secondary to teaching and is presented as interpretable. This development leads to the risk of rest for children not being planned. The consequences can lead to children’s rest practices not being adapted to their different needs, which can cause stress in children. This study is based on an inductive semi-structured interview study in which the preschool teachers´ interpretations and expressed actionsprovide a result. In our discussion, the preschool teachers´ interpretations are compared with previous research and the study’s theoretical starting point, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The challenge is to find strategies to meet all children’s rest needs. But the fundamental part of preschool teacher practice is to develop a secure relationship with children as the basis on which to meet their needs.