30 month old / 2.5 year old sleep schedule: Bedtime and nap schedule (2024)

FAQs

30 month old / 2.5 year old sleep schedule: Bedtime and nap schedule? ›

Typical sleep at this age

Most children this age go to bed sometime between 7 and 9 p.m. and get up between 6:30 and 8 a.m. It may seem that your child's sleep patterns finally resemble yours, but he'll spend more time than you do in REM sleep and the deeper stages of non-REM sleep.

Typical sleep at this age

Most children this age go to bed sometime between 7 and 9 p.m. and get up between 6:30 and 8 a.m. It may seem that your child's sleep patterns finally resemble yours, but he'll spend more time than you do in REM sleep and the deeper stages of non-REM sleep.

From about 2 to 3 years

Your child needs about 11 to 12 hours of sleep a night. They need 1 nap during the day for about 1 hour. This will depend on the child and how active they were that day. Avoid naps after 3.30pm so they will be ready for sleep by 7pm to 9pm.

At this age, toddlers generally sleep 12 to 13 hours in a 24-hour period, including daytime naps of 1 to 2 hours. Some toddlers may still wake at night and will need you to comfort them, especially if they have night time fears.

There isn't a universal answer to this. Some 2 month old babies do best with a 7:00-8:00 pm bedtime. When kept up past 8:00 pm, these babies start to become fussy and overtired. On the other hand, some 2 month old babies thrive with a nap around 7:00 pm and bedtime between 8:00 and 10:00 pm.

When you set a bedtime for your toddler, it will typically need to be 4.5-5.5 hours from the end of their afternoon nap, so keep this in mind for timing naps and aiming for bed. Most 2 year olds can only tolerate about 4.5 hours.

This depends on your child's wake time and nap length, but it's common to see bedtime between 7:00 - 9:00 PM at this age. Ideally, your 2.5 year old's bedtime will allow for 10 - 12 hours of night sleep on most nights. If your toddler takes 1.5 - 2 hour long naps they'll likely need 10 - 11 hours of sleep.

The Best Time to Sleep Is Between 8 p.m. and Midnight

To align our sleep schedules with our body's natural cycles (our circadian rhythms), adults should go to bed when it's dark out, after 8 p.m. We also get deeper, more restorative sleep when our sleep time begins before midnight.

Most toddlers need a nap until around age 4. Nap refusals at 2 years old are a common sign of the sleep regression. Instead of dropping the nap, stay consistent with your healthy sleep habits and routines.

Every child is different, but most kids drop their afternoon nap sometime between the ages of 3 and 5. There are plenty of signs to look for that your child is ready to stop napping, such as not sleeping during naptime, having trouble falling asleep at nighttime, and waking up earlier than usual.

Do daytime naps affect night sleep for toddlers? ›

How daytime sleeping habits can affect night-time sleep. Your child's night-time sleeping habits may be disrupted by their daytime naps. For example, if they don't sleep during the afternoon, you may find they are too tired to eat their evening meal. As they are so tired, you put them to bed early.

But the range of normal is still very wide. Infants up to 3 months old should get 14–17 hours of sleep over a 24-hour period, says the National Sleep Foundation.

Newborns generally sleep for two to three hours before waking to eat, day and night. As they get older, babies are usually able to sleep for increasingly longer stretches of time at night without waking to eat. Between the age of 2 to 3 months old, healthy babies are often able to sleep for six hours without feeding.

There's no 2-month sleep regression, though there may be one around the 4-month mark. If you see the signs of a sleep regression, here's how to handle them and how to keep sleep regression is brief. Over the course of 24-hours, a 2-month-old should sleep about 14.5 hours.

While a 7pm to 7am sleep schedule might be your dream toddler bedtime routine, most toddlers do best when their bedtime falls between 8 and 9pm. If your toddler fights night-night, it's an indicator that their bedtime may be too early...or too late.

Make sure your child's nap isn't so late in the afternoon that they aren't tired when it's bedtime. Experts recommend keeping at least three hours between the end of a nap and bedtime. So if your child's bedtime is between 7 and 8 p.m., don't put them down for a nap after 3 p.m. or so.

Nap Schedules for 1- and 2-Year-Olds

For younger toddlers between 12 and 18 months, the ideal schedule might include a morning nap at 11 a.m. and an afternoon nap at 3:30 p.m. On the other hand, 2-year-olds may only need a single nap in the early afternoon.

Helping him get enough sleep is quite important. Toddlers between 2- and 3-years-old sleep, on average, 10 to 13 hours per 24-hour period. Little ones his age can seem overactive if they don't get enough sleep. They also may be more irritable and have a harder time falling asleep.

Is 5.30 too early for toddler bedtime? ›

It's very early, but sometimes children get very exhausted and fall asleep early and some children need more sleep than others. See if the child sleeps through the night to a reasonable hour in the morning. If they do, it's fine.