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The 5-Step System to Better Toddler Sleep 
As many people know, it is important to have a consistent bedtime for your baby or toddler. That, plus a good bedtime routine, is generally the first step in working towards sleeping through the night, and towards creating a predictable daily sleep and feeding schedule.
But what are the best bedtimes by age, exactly? A bedtime that’s too early may result in early-morning waking and short naps, but a too-late bedtime may make your baby overtired, which can lead to a whole host of sleep problems at night. Therefore, the best bedtimes by age depend on your unique baby’s sleep needs and development.
Not to worry, parents – as usual, we have the information you need! We’ve even organized it for you and everything – and we’ve made it printable! Stick this on your baby’s bedroom wall, put a copy in your diaper bag to reference when you’re traveling, hand it out to friends at your morning moms’ group – you get the idea! Scroll down to find out how you can get a printable PDF version of this chart.
Average Baby and Toddler Bedtimes By Age
| Age | Total Sleep | Avg. Wake Time* | Bedtime | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newborn | 15-18 hours | Varies | N/A | Newborns need to eat frequently and will wake round the clock to feed, so a fixed bedtime is obsolete at this age. Watch your baby’s sleep cues closely, and put down for sleep at the first signs of tiredness. |
| 1-4 Months | 14-15 hours | Varies for 1-2 month olds; 3-4 month olds average 1-2 hours between naps | 8-11 p.m. | User the later bedtime for younger babies. By 3 or 4 months, you can gradually shift to using the earlier bedtime, as your baby (hopefully!) starts to sleep for one longer stretch at night. |
| 4-8 Months | 14-15 hours | Average wake time is 2-3 hours | 6-7:30 p.m. | Most babies are ready for a predictable schedule by about 6 months. Regular naps emerge at this time (4 naps at first, and then gradually moves to 3 naps). Use the earlier bedtime during the transition from 4 naps to 3, to ward off over tiredness. |
| 8-10 Months | 12-15 hours | Average awake time is about 3 hours | 6-7 p.m. | Most babies are taking 2 naps at this age. This is also prime time for the 8/9/10 month sleep regression! Use the earlier betimes if the regression has your baby napping less or waking more at night, and becoming overtired. |
| 10-15 Months | 12-14 hours | Average awake time is 3-4 hours | 6-8 p.m. | Stick with 2 naps, if possible; most babies aren’t ready to transition to one nap until 15-18 months. If your baby goes through the 12 month nap regression, use the earlier bedtime to make up for lost nap sleep. |
| 15 Months-3 Years | 12-14 hours | Average awake time is about 5 hours | 6-8 p.m. | Your toddler will transition to needing just one afternoon nap by about 18 months. That nap should be about 2-2.5 hours in length. Use the earlier bedtime during the transition from 2 naps to 1, and during the 18 month and 2 year sleep regressions, to make up for any lost sleep. By 2 years of age, you should start using 7:00 as your earliest bedtime; the 6:00 bedtime is more appropriate for younger toddlers. |
| 3-5 Years | 11-13 hours | Average awake time is about 12 hours, if toddler/preschooler is no longer napping | 7-8:30 p.m. | Most children give up the afternoon nap at this stage. Substitute an afternoon rest time in for the nap time. Try to time bedtime so that you allow for roughly 12 hours of night sleep, for children who are no longer napping. Use the later bedtime for children who are still transitioning away from the afternoon nap. |
*Average Wake Time refers to the amount of time your baby or toddler is able to comfortably stay awake during the day, between naps.
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Valerie Williams says
I try to start calming down my 1 month old around 8pm is that too early? She won’t go to sleep till closer to 11 some days and other days she’s out at 9:30. I don’t understand what else to do. I rock her, bounce her, feed her and change her. Try everything and those days she just won’t go to sleep. Help?
Neosha says
@Valerie – Thank you for stopping by our sleepy little village and for sharing. Babies this age are a little tough to get on an exact schedule or bedtime routine so we can definitely understand your frustration if what you’re doing doesn’t seem to be working. Here’s an article I think you may find useful as it overviews helping your 4 week old to sleep specifically: https://www.babysleepsite.com/how-to-get-my-baby-to-sleep/how-to-get-my-2-3-or-4-week-old-to-sleep/. I hope it helps, Valerie. Hang in there!
Joycelyn says
My baby is almost 8 months. I feed him every 4 hours starting at 5 am, that’s when he usually wakes up in the morning hungry.
I give him his last bottle at about 9pm. This is late considering what you have laid out! Should I feed him less earlier and get him to bed sooner? Will this cause him to wake up earlier in the am?
Help! Hahahaha
Janelle Reid says
@Joycelyn, Thanks for writing! Our samples are definitely not the same for every baby, but they do provide a general guideline of what your baby’s schedule could look like. Here is a link to an article with some tips for early waking (earlier bedtime is one of them): https://www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/baby-waking-too-early/
Hopefully that will help change things, but give it time and let us know how it turns out! We do offer personalized consulting as we cannot cover every possibility on our site for every child and sometimes you need more information so this is the way we can most efficiently get it to you. 🙂 If you are interested in working with a sleep consultant, please visit our services page here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/baby-toddler-sleep-consulting-services/
I hope this helps!
Tulika Ladsariya says
Hi. My toddler has me so perplexed. She’s an active 2y4m in the head but less so with gross motor. She wakes 7am naps somewhere around 1-3/3:30pm. Bedtime 8pm (lights out) and sleeps around 8:30 but lot of early morning waking and going back to sleep from 4/5am. And lots of yawning all through the day and some cranky behavior. I feel like I’ve tried everything but nothing consistently and I seem to need 5 hours in the evening to fit everything before I. Put her down. She fits seem to be getting her second molar and I see some fussing around that bit she had been like this for months now. What do I. Need to fix? Earlier bedtime takes her forever to fall asleep, the only thing I can’t change is naptime as she goes to Montessori in the morning and comes back around 12:30.
Janelle Reid says
@Tulika Ladsariya, Thank you for writing to us. I am sorry you have been struggling with your daughter’s sleep recently. It sounds like there may be a few factors going on and you would greatly benefit from working with one of our sleep consultants on. They can help create a schedule (that can coordinate with the mandatory 12:30 naptime) that is best for your daughter and can help you handle those early morning stirrings. For more information on what to do next, please contact us directly here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/contact
Hang in there!
Allie says
She’s pretty much healthy, happy and chipper most of the time. She rarely gets cranky. The primary cue that lets me know she’s close to ready to sleep is she’ll start kneading just below my collar bone area (a habit that harkens back to her nursing days). I guess she does just have a low sleep need, as you put it. I struggled so much in the early days, partly because I kept thinking it was my fault and I must be doing something wrong. Thanks for your interest. It helps to read and talk about it, although I’ve mostly just accepted the situation.
Emily DeJeu says
@ Allie – sounds like you’ve taken the right approach to me 🙂 While many parents we work with have higher sleep-needs babies, who tend to get cranky without plenty of sleep, it’s good to remember that sleep needs is a spectrum, and that means there have to be babies at the other end, who really just need less sleep than their peers. Sounds like your daughter may fall into that category!
Of course, if you do have problems down the road, or suspect she really isn’t getting enough sleep, don’t hesitate to contact us for help! 🙂
Allie says
This all sounds great on paper, but I wish I knew how to do it. Our little one is 2.5 and she sleeps as little as 7 and rarely more than 8.5 hours at a stretch. Usually, she takes one nap of about 2 hours, but sometimes as little as 15-60 minutes. Yesterday, she was up for 16 hours straight and pretty much still going strong. Typically, she’ll go at least 7 hours between sleeps. And this is a big improvement from her younger days! I’m at my wits’ end.
Emily DeJeu says
@ Allie – sounds like she a has a fairly low sleep need, although the totals you mention here are lower than the lowest end of the spectrum of sleep needs for a child this age. What’s her disposition like, if I may ask? Does she seem happy and chipper on this amount of sleep? Or is she cranky and fussy? Does she seem healthy and happy?
Emily DeJeu says
@ Anna — Yes, that might be a bit on the late side. Then again, some families really prefer a later bedtime, due to scheduling issues that make an early bedtime harder (like one or both parents work and aren’t home until 6:30, for example.) If you like the late bedtime, then you could simply shift the whole schedule forward to accommodate. However, if you want an earlier bedtime, that’s a different story 🙂
As for your other question – the bedtime listed here are when you would have light outs, ideally. The goal would be for your daughter to fall asleep within 15 or 20 minutes of this bedtime. If she sacks out immediately at bedtime, that can actually be a sign that she’s too tired, but if she proceeds to stay up for an hour or more after going down for bed, that can be a sign that you need to adjust her naps.
Does this help? Thanks for commenting, @ Anna!
@ Rachel – yes, all of these assume about 12 hours or so of night sleep. Now, older babies and toddlers are likely to sleep for that full 12 hours, but that won’t necessarily be true for, say, a 4 month old who likely still needs to eat at least once or twice during a 12-hour night. But we usually recommend that when families are creating a schedule, they allow for a 12-hour night. So if you want a later bedtime (maybe 8 p.m.), then allow for an 8 a.m. wake-up time. If you want an earlier bedtime (6 p.m.) then allow for a 6 a.m. wake-up time. This is why we generally don’t recommend regular bedtimes before 6 p.m. – it makes the wake-up SO early!
Of course, special occasions (like holidays, travel, etc.) may mean later bedtimes, but those can be considered exceptions, and it’s fine to have exceptions now and then. And you’re right that during a nap transition, or a sleep regression, or an illness, you may need to use an earlier bedtime if naps aren’t what they should be, or if you’re having more night waking than usual that could result in over tiredness.
Thanks for commenting, Rachel! 🙂
@ Jessica- this sounds rough! We generally recommend that for a morning wake-up that’s before 6 a.m., you treat it as a night waking and do what you can to get her to go back to sleep. Nicole actually just did a guess post over at rookiemoms. com on this very topic – you can see it here: http://www.rookiemoms.com/what-to-do-if-your-baby-or-toddler-wakes-up-too-early/
Hope this helps, Jessica! Thanks for taking the time to comment 🙂
@ Chris – is this a new development? If so, sounds like the 18 month regression to me. You can read about it here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/baby-sleep-patterns/why-18-month-sleep-regression-can-be-hardest/ As for how to solve this problem – you could start by downloading a copy of our free napping guide here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/free-baby-nap-guide/, or you could pick up a copy of our Mastering Naps & Schedules e-Book, here: http://www.babynapswell.com
Hope these resources are helpful, Chris! Thanks for commenting. 🙂
chris says
My 19 month old, who used to take great, long naps, has started napping only 30 minutes to an hour for the day. I’ve tried different things, but nothing is helping to extend her nap.
Jessica says
My daughter definitely went to one nap before 15 months. I tried for over a week to continue putting her down for the morning nap and she just wouldn’t do it. She went to one nap about 13 or 14 months and slept in a lot in the morning to make up for it. The first 2 weeks or so she woke and ate around 5:30 and slept until 8. This also happened to be the week of daylight savings time so I’m not sure if that made a difference (or messed up the one nap). Now she is taking a solid nap – usually 2 hours. She goes down between 7 and 7:30 but has been waking early about half the time. The last couple of days her wake times were 5:30, 6:00 and 5:45. I’m not sure how to fix the wake time! Before the flip to one nap she usually slept until 6:30 or so (and because her wake times were all over, I got her up by 7 or 7:15 to help keep it consistent) We eat lunch about noon and she goes down about 1:00 which seems to be a great nap time (yesterday 3 hours!) but that makes for a LONG morning. Any suggestions? THANKS!!
Rachel says
Very interesting, thanks! But I did wonder how these bedtimes relate to overall night-time sleep and morning wake-up times? Are you assuming a standard wake-up time here? We often used a pre-6pm bedtime during transitions/regressions etc, but we had to wake our then toddler at 6:30am in order to get off to work/childcare in time. On the other hand I know families who prefer to get up much later and so end up with later bedtimes – as we have done when staying with relatives on holiday.
Anna says
Thanks for posting this guide! Our 23 month old (who naps about 2 hours a day) is typically asleep for the night by 9:00-9:15, which makes me think we’re keeping her up too long. Hm. Something to look at…
Are the bedtimes listed here supposed to be the time we start bedtime (books, PJ’s, etc) or is it the “lights out, night-night” time? Or the time that the kid is actually asleep?