BEDTIME CHART BY AGE AND WAKE UP TIME HOW TO

If you haven’t already, start to create a soothing bedtime routine.Īround 6 months you may notice a more predictable time that your baby gets tired or fussy at night. Notice the average number of nighttime hours at this age is 10-11.5. He may still be awake for feeding several times.

Read: Newborn Sleep Schedule: What You Can Do for Some Sleep Infants: 4 – 11 Monthsĭuring the Infant Stage you will begin to notice your child settling into more of a routine consisting of several naps during the day and longer stretches at night. Consider waking him during the day so he doesn’t miss a feeding. Keep the lights on and the shades up during the day and keep night time feedings quiet and in dim light. Your main sleep focus should be to help him differentiate between day and night. Think in 3-4 hour increments at a time because your newborn (0-3 month old) will sleep in short bursts of 2-4 hours at a time for 14-17 hours a day. His neurological and physical development is working at breakneck pace and he can become exhausted even after a short amount of time awake.Īt this stage do not be concerned with the appropriate bedtime. It may not look like it but he is working extremely hard at this age. You are there to nurture and care for him, quickly providing the nourishment and soothing he needs. During these first months of life your baby will eat and sleep at will. Also, their need to eat is quite frequent.

Newborns do not have an ideal bedtime as their circadian rhythm (or internal clock) has yet to be established. Breaking Down Ideal Bedtime by Age Newborns: 0 – 3 Months For instance a 1-2 year old on average tends to need 11 hours of sleep at night vs 8.75 hours. The Sleep Lady has found over her 20 years of practicing as a sleep coach that most children under 3 years of age lean towards the higher end of these averages of night sleep. as the ideal time for him to fall asleep each night. That means you back up 11 hours from 6 a.m. This is your child’s ideal bedtime.įor example, your 10-month-old wakes for the day 6 a.m., and you’ve determined that he does best with 11 hours of sleep at night.

BEDTIME CHART BY AGE AND WAKE UP TIME HOW TO

Next you will look at the chart entitled How to Find Your Child’s Ideal Bedtime to find the intersection of your child’s wake up time and number of hours of nighttime sleep he needs. Then look across to the right to find his total hours of sleep needed (on average), the average hours of daytime sleep needed, and the remaining hours of nighttime sleep needed. Look at the chart below, entitled “Recommended Sleep Averages – Naps and Nighttime” and locate your child’s age/stage in the left-hand column. Sleep coach to get you where you need to be.Find the number of hours of sleep your baby or child needs per day.Figure out the math for their ideal bedtime.Implementing it may not feel very simple, of course! But, discovering the best time for your child to go to sleep is a good first step because an appropriate, early bedtime helps prevent a host of sleep problems such as early rising and night wakings. Then it becomes a simple math problem to find the ideal bedtime for your child. That tells you roughly how many hours of sleep he needs, and what time your child needs to wake up in the morning in order to get to preschool or daycare or just to begin your day at home. In deciding the best bedtime for your child, we take into consideration the child’s age. How do you decide when your child should go to sleep at night? Is there really an ideal bedtime for your child? And does it really matter when he goes to sleep as long as he gets the sleep he needs? These are the questions you may be asking in your search for your child’s bedtime. Ideal Bedtime: How to Decide What Time Your Child Goes to Bed

Bedtime chart by age and wake up time