Sleep. Something parents want and kids fight. Few things affect your quality of life more than sleep (or lack thereof). From the every two-hour nighttime wakeups of new parenthood to the naptime showdowns of toddlerhood, sleep feels a moving target. What works at one stage may not work at the next. The good news is that most sleep challenges have patterns, and understanding those patterns makes them far easier to navigate. This guide walks through how much sleep children need at each stage (from birth through age 5), how to build and adjust schedules as your child grows and how to handle the regressions and transitions that can catch you off guard.

How Much Sleep Do Babies and Toddlers Actually Need?

Sleep needs change significantly during the first five years of life. Here are the recommended guidelines from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics:

• Newborns 0-3 months: 14 to 17 hours per day in short stretches because they don’t have a regular sleep cycle yet
• Infants 4-12 months: 12 to 16 hours per day including naps
• Toddlers 1-2 years: 11 to 14 hours per day usually split between one or two naps and a longer overnight stretch
• Preschoolers 3-5 years: 10 to 13 hours per day, sometimes with naps, but most kids start dropping naptime between ages 3 and 4

Sample Sleep Schedules by Age

These sample schedules can serve as a useful anchor when figuring out your child’s routine. Use them as a starting point and adjust based on your family’s needs.

Newborn and Infant Sleep: Setting Realistic Expectations

Newborns don’t have a circadian rhythm because they can’t produce their own melatonin, which means their sleep usually happens in short bursts throughout the day. Around 3 to 4 months, most infants begin producing melatonin, so many of them start sleeping for longer stretches at night. By 6 months, babies may sleep 6 to 8 hours consecutively overnight, though this can vary.

Navigating Nap Transitions: From Three Naps to None

Nap time is a parent’s dream and a child’s mortal enemy. Nap transitions are some of the most disruptive sleep changes in early childhood because they temporarily throw off the balance between daytime rest and nighttime sleep. Most babies drop from three naps to two around 6 to 9 months, then transition from two naps to one between 12 and 18 months. The shift from one nap to none typically happens between ages 2.5 and 4 years. This is the most challenging one to navigate because the “I not tired!” proclamations happen through droopy eyelids. During any nap transition, you can expect a week or two of overtiredness and earlier wakings as your child adjusts. Moving bedtime 30 minutes earlier during this window can help offset lost sleep and reduce (some of) the crankiness that comes with it.

Building a Bedtime Routine That Works

A consistent bedtime routine is your best bet for improving your child’s sleep quality. Routines work because they tell a child’s nervous system that sleep is coming. The old reliable of bathtime, brush teeth and read books is the bat signal for bedtime. No matter what your nighttime schedule looks like, the key is consistency: doing the same steps in the same order at the same time each night.

Sleep Regressions: What They Are and How to Get Through Them

Sleep regressions (jump scare!) are temporary periods of time where sleep is disrupted. Your child may suddenly start waking more frequently, resist naps or take longer to fall asleep. Regressions cluster around developmental leaps, commonly at 4 months, 8 to 10 months, 12 months, 18 months and 2 years, when the brain is rapidly acquiring new skills. During a regression, your sleep-through-the-night child may start waking two or three times again. The most important thing you can do is maintain the existing routine without introducing new sleep associations (like feeding or rocking to sleep) that will need to be undone later.

Tackling Common Sleep Challenges: Early Waking, Bedtime Battles and Night Waking

You’re settled in for the night, drifting off into your REM cycle and bam your toddler materializes at your bedside asking for water. And it’s not the first time. Most sleep challenges in the first five years fall into one of three categories: trouble falling asleep, frequent waking overnight or waking up way too early.

If your little one has trouble falling asleep, there could be many different reasons. Looking at their day will help you figure out why they might be struggling to fall asleep. Were their naps too long? Did they eat enough or too close to bedtime? Did they go to bed overtired? Did they have screentime before bed?

Frequent night waking for children 6 months and older may be linked to sleep associations, which means your child has developed a sleep habit like needing a special person, object or activity to fall asleep. To break the habit, you’ll need to help them learn how to fall asleep on their own.  

If your child wakes up too early, you may need to adjust their bedtime. This one is a little tricky because you have to determine if bedtime needs to be earlier (counterintuitive as it sounds) or later. Look at their nap schedule because that may also need adjusting. If that doesn’t help curb the 5 AM wakeups, try a color-changing clock that signifies when it’s time to sleep or get up.

How Consistent Daytime Schedules at Daycare Support Better Sleep at Home

One overlooked factor that impacts baby and toddler sleep schedules is what happens during the day. Children who have consistent wake times, meals, outdoor play and rest periods are better primed for restorative overnight sleep because their circadian rhythms are reinforced by predictable daily patterns. At The Goddard School®, structured daily schedules are a core part of your child’s experience. It means they know what to expect, which reduces anxiety and supports the kind of calm that translates into better sleep at home. Parents can reinforce this rhythm by maintaining consistent wake times and mealtimes on weekends, even when you’d rather not get out of bed until 9 AM. Kids are sensitive to change, so even a small shift in schedule on weekends can disrupt the rest of the week’s sleep for the whole family.