Child sleep: the complete guide
Child sleep needs fall from 14 to 17 hours a day for a newborn to 8 to 10 hours for a teenager, and most sleep difficulties ease with a consistent bedtime routine, a steady response to night wakings and a screen-free last hour. Each section below sums up one topic and links to the detailed guide.
By Pierre Filstroff, published and updated
Contents
Why child sleep deserves a guide of its own
Sleep guides usually cover one question each: the evening routine, night wakings, screens. None says where to start, yet these topics depend on one another. A child's sleep rests on several things at once: a number of hours that shifts with age, consistency that takes weeks to build, and transitions (naps, a new school year, screens) that upset the balance you found. One piece in place never explains the whole picture.
Each section sums up one topic in a few paragraphs, then points to the guide that covers it in depth. The contents list takes you straight to your situation. It doesn't replace medical advice: when a sleep problem settles in despite simple adjustments, see a professional rather than searching online for weeks.
How many hours of sleep does a child need at each age?
It depends on age: 14 to 17 hours a day for a newborn, 8 to 10 hours for a teenager. The need shrinks from birth to adolescence. These benchmarks are the ones behind this site's sleep calculator. Eighteen experts convened by the National Sleep Foundation set them by consensus, as ranges rather than a single number (Hirshkowitz, Whiton, Albert et al., Sleep Health, 2015).
The total counts night sleep and naps together. It is 14 to 17 hours before 3 months, 12 to 15 hours from 4 to 11 months, then 11 to 14 hours between 1 and 2 years. From 3 to 5 years the range is 10 to 13 hours, and the nap usually ends around 4-5. From 6 to 13 it is 9 to 11 hours. At 14 and over it falls to 8 to 10 hours. This is the bracket where the gap between need and actual sleep grows the most, as teenagers cut into bedtime for homework, screens and their own independence.
Individual leeway is wide. One child does well near the bottom of the range, another needs the top to feel fine. Watch for a trend: nights that stay below the range for a long time. One missed number on one evening says almost nothing.
Child sleep needs by age: the benchmarks that make a difference
Understanding a child's sleep cycles
A child's sleep doesn't run on an adult's rhythm. In a baby, one cycle lasts about 50 minutes, against 90 for an adult. The child goes through more cycles each night, and more shifts between light and deep sleep. Each shift is a chance to wake up. It is one of the main reasons infants wake so often.
Around 3-4 months, a child starts linking cycles without waking in between. Nights often get longer at that point. The make-up of sleep changes too. A newborn spends about half of sleep time in REM sleep, against 20% for an adult. Adult-style sleep architecture only settles in around age 5 (Sleep Foundation, "Infant Sleep Cycles: How a Baby's Sleep Changes With Age"). That helps put things in perspective: at this age, wakings come from biology.
The signs a child isn't getting enough sleep
A tired child almost never acts like a tired adult. In young children, lack of sleep often looks like the opposite: restlessness, hyperactivity, irritability, unstable moods. Some behaviors even resemble attention-deficit disorder. Sleep is then sometimes ruled out too fast (Owens, Babcock & Weiss, "Evaluation and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Excessive Daytime Sleepiness," Clinical Pediatrics, 2020).
Other signs are less ambiguous. Waking up is hard, to the point that an adult has to insist to get the child out of bed. Nights are much longer on weekends, or catch-up naps are frequent. There are mood swings, an unusual need for closeness, trouble concentrating, or dozing off in class (Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, "Signs of Exhaustion in Children," 2022). Alone, each sign can have another cause. Together, over several days, they almost always point to a sleep deficit posing as a behavior problem.
Child sleep needs by age: the benchmarks that make a difference
The bedtime routine: the foundation of everything
Of all the levers in this guide, the bedtime routine is probably the one with the most direct effect and the best evidence. A study of more than 10,000 children under six found a dose-dependent link: the more consistently the evening routine was kept, the better the child slept (Mindell, Li, Sadeh, Kwon & Goh, Sleep, 2015).
Consistency matters more than length. You repeat the same actions, in the same order, at about the same time. Three or four steps are enough: a quick wash, pajamas, a story, lights out. The sequence is what counts. With repetition, the child's brain ties it to sleep coming.
The routine changes shape with age: repetition and the same book for toddlers, presence and conversation for older children. Its job stays the same. It bridges the busy day and the night.
Bedtime routine: building a calming ritual, from ages 2 to 10
At what age does a child stop napping?
There is no fixed age: the nap fades out gradually, at a pace that is different for each child. A meta-analysis measured it. Fewer than 2.5% of children had stopped napping before age two, against 94% at five (Staton, Rankin, Harding, Smith, Westwood, LeBourgeois & Thorpe, Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2019). Between those ages, almost anything is normal.
Roughly, the third nap goes before 9 months and the second between 15 and 18 months. That leaves one nap after lunch, which most children keep until 3-4 years. It then becomes less and less regular.
Behavior is the signal, not age. Refusing the nap for several days in a row, with no visible tiredness late in the afternoon, means the child is ready to stop. One refusal, after a restless night or a busy afternoon, proves nothing.
Night wakings and regressions: what's normal
Waking several times a night is ordinary at any age. A child's sleep has more shifts between light and deep phases than an adult's, and each one is a chance to surface. What improves with the months is falling back asleep without calling out. The wakings themselves drop far less than people think.
A video study shows it. At twelve months, half the babies observed still woke at night and couldn't fall back asleep alone (Goodlin-Jones, Burnham, Gaylor & Anders, Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 2001). Yet people often assume that "sleeping through" is a given by then.
Regressions arrive at fairly predictable moments. They go with a motor or language milestone, separation anxiety (around 8-10 months, then 18-24 months), teething, or a change of scene: a move, daycare, a new baby in the family. A brain busy consolidating a skill stays more active at night. Sleep gets lighter at cycle changes.
Two to six weeks are usually enough for it to pass. Keeping the same routine and responding in a steady way shortens the stretch. Brief comfort works better than a long negotiation. There's no need to switch methods midway.
Night wakings and sleep regression in children: understanding them and getting through
Co-sleeping: what the research says
Many families sleep with their child at some point, and it almost always stops on its own. Among more than 900 preschool-age children followed, 38.4% practiced reactive co-sleeping: they came into the parents' bed during the night instead of starting there. For 22.9%, it happened every night. The rate fell with age. Two years later, nearly half of the children who did it nightly had stopped (Marakovitz, Sheldrick, Copeland et al., Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 2023).
Safety depends on age. Before one year, sharing a bed raises the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, especially with a smoking parent, alcohol, extreme fatigue or a soft surface. Pediatric guidance then favors a nearby but separate sleep space.
After one year, the precautions change: a firm mattress, no gaps where the child could get stuck, bedding suited to their age. No official age limit exists, for lack of clear data. To stop, a transition spread over several nights usually goes better than quitting overnight.
Evening screens: the effect on falling asleep
Later bedtime, slower sleep onset, shorter night: that's what most studies on screens find, in children and teenagers alike. In a review of sixty-seven studies, about nine in ten reported at least one of these three effects (Hale & Guan, Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2015). A result this steady is unlikely to be chance, but it doesn't prove that the screen alone explains every evening when falling asleep drags on.
Three mechanisms add up: blue light, which delays melatonin; stimulating content, which keeps the child alert; and time taken from the evening routine. What matters most is the thirty-to-sixty-minute window before bed, far more than daytime use. Removing the screen from that slot alone gives most of the benefit, with no blanket ban.
Replacing the screen with an activity works better than a flat ban. A story can take its place, read aloud or listened to as audio: it fills the same moment of the routine without lighting a screen. Keeping that last hour clear every night, weekends included, counts for more than how strict one evening is. The body clock takes no days off.
Daytime screens: the indirect effect on the night
Daytime benchmarks form habits that spill into the evening, even though they don't target sleep. The World Health Organization recommends no sedentary screen time before age two. From two to four, it sets a maximum of one hour a day and adds that less is better (World Health Organization, Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age, 2019).
Past primary school, no French benchmark gives a single number of hours anymore. Psychiatrist Serge Tisseron has circulated the 3-6-9-12 guideposts since 2008. They move by age stage rather than by stopwatch: no personal screen before six, no supervised internet before nine, no unsupervised internet before twelve.
Duration doesn't tell the whole story. A cartoon watched alone on a loop doesn't weigh the same as a show watched with an adult who talks about it. A screen left on in the background eats into attention without anyone noticing.
The indirect effect on the night lives there. When screens stay confined to known moments of the day, the screen-free last hour in the evening becomes one rule among others, not an arbitrary cutoff. The direct effect on falling asleep belongs to the evening window covered earlier.
Nighttime fears and anxiety: getting through them without feeding them
Most children go through nighttime fears, with a peak between ages 4 and 6. Imagination and cause-and-effect thinking then develop faster than the ability to tell a real threat from an imagined one (Gordon, King, Gullone et al., Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2007). A fear that appears now follows the normal developmental calendar. It points to no flaw in the bedtime routine.
Some habits keep it going without anyone noticing. Checking under the bed every night calms the child for the moment, but sends the opposite message: the imagined danger may deserve to be taken seriously. A response that changes from night to night is also harder to live with than a steady one.
Acknowledge the feeling without agreeing with the fear. Saying "I can see you're scared" doesn't confirm that something lurks in the room. A nightlight or a comfort object gives the child a way to act alone. A regular routine and an absorbing story pull attention away just when the fear returns most easily, in the quiet before sleep.
A fear that lasts well past the usual age, or comes with marked difficulties during the day, is worth raising with a pediatrician.
Fear of the dark and nighttime worries in children: understanding them to ease them
Evening meals: what actually affects sleep
The evening meal rests on fewer firm benchmarks than the routine or bedtime. A few points stand out anyway. Dinner eaten right before bed leaves little time for digestion. Finishing about an hour before the routine starts keeps the child from going straight from table to bed. That number needn't be exact to the minute.
Evening sugar shows a real but modest link, and an associative one rather than a causal one. In a study of Taiwanese children aged 6 to 12, heavy drinkers of sugary beverages were much more likely to sleep under 8.5 hours on school days (Shih, Wu, Pan & Chang, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022). It is an association between two habits. It doesn't prove that one particular drink shortens a given child's night on its own. Dinner sugar also goes beyond dessert: sauces, packaged bread and some cereals contain it, often more than people expect.
Caffeine follows a similar logic. It hides in chocolate, colas, iced tea and some ice creams, and builds up late in the day. A square of chocolate at snack time, ice cream after dinner and a few sips of shared soda can be enough to push back sleep onset. None of this calls for a perfectly timed dinner: an ordinary meal, finished with a comfortable margin before bed, covers the vast majority of cases.
Evening meals and a child's sleep: what helps them sleep better
Starting the school year: a milestone worth planning for
After several weeks without school hours, bedtime has almost always slid later. It happens every year and is nothing abnormal. The trouble hits on the first Monday, when the wake-up time jumps an hour or two at once. The internal clock hasn't had time to follow.
A follow-up of primary schools that moved their start an hour earlier shows it. A year later, students' bedtime had moved only 11 to 12 minutes earlier, against 22 to 23 minutes for wake-up. That gap means less sleep, night after night (Meltzer, Wahlstrom, Plog & Strand, Sleep, 2021).
It's better to start the reset one to two weeks before school, not the night before. Move bedtime earlier in small steps, bring the usual routine back, and get the child into morning light right after waking. The first mornings often stay hard anyway, with end-of-day tiredness and quick sleep onset. That doesn't mean the reset failed.
The most common sleep problems, at a glance
The problems that come up most often fall into a few families, covered earlier. Almost every child goes through night wakings and passing regressions. That isn't a disorder: it's how a brain under construction works. Refusing bedtime or naptime often goes with a routine that has become irregular, or an age change that hasn't settled. Nighttime fears follow a precise calendar, peaking between 4 and 6.
Other difficulties come more from the surroundings: screens on in the last hour, a dinner that's too late or too sugary, a school start that moves the wake-up time without giving the internal clock time to adapt. Almost every time, the same levers come back: a stable routine, a steady response from one night to the next, and patience, without changing method after every bad night.
Myth: good sleep means never waking up at night
Many parents judge their child's sleep by one criterion: do they wake at night? By that measure, the child who calls out at 2am sleeps badly and the silent child sleeps well. Research doesn't back that idea.
The video study cited above shows it: at twelve months, half the babies observed still woke without falling back asleep alone. The baby who "sleeps through" goes through the same light-sleep phases as any other. The difference is speed and silence: they return to deep sleep in seconds, before a parent opens an eye. Progress shows in a growing ability to fall back asleep alone, not in a total absence of waking. That skill takes months to build.
Night wakings and sleep regression in children: understanding them and getting through
Myth: a child who sleeps badly during the day sleeps better at night
The idea comes up often during transitions: if the nap gets in the way of bedtime, cut it so the child is tired in the evening. It sounds logical. It reverses what is seen in young children.
Cutting the nap too early doesn't give a longer or more restful night. It creates a sleep shortfall that builds across the day, and the night doesn't always make it up in one go. A child in sleep debt often sleeps worse in the evening: harder to settle, more restless, more wakings.
The answer shows in late-afternoon behavior, not on a calendar. When the nap disappears for several days with no visible tiredness, it has truly become unnecessary. Trying to tire the child out more changes nothing.
When to see a professional
Most difficulties described here resolve with time and consistency, without medical advice. A few signs, though, deserve to be taken seriously rather than waited out.
On the waking side, four signals call for medical advice: no improvement after six to eight weeks, visible daytime distress, noisy breathing or pauses during sleep, a clear change in appetite or behavior.
For nighttime fears the threshold is similar: a fear that lasts well past the usual age, comes with visible daytime difficulties, or spreads beyond bedtime. In both cases, unusual duration or intensity is what should raise concern. Wakings and nighttime fears are common at these ages and signal nothing abnormal in themselves.
Building a routine that lasts, whatever the age
A child's sleep is never settled once and for all. It readjusts at every stage, from birth to the teenage years: developmental leaps, age changes, school starts, new habits. One point comes back at every stage of this guide: consistency, with a stable routine, a predictable response from one night to the next, and timings moved in small steps, never all at once.
A child who sleeps well at two will still have hard nights at four, seven or eleven. A nap dropped too soon, a nighttime fear, a new school year or a move can reopen the question. That doesn't mean what you set up has failed. It's the ordinary rhythm of a childhood moving forward. At each stage, the same instincts remain the best foothold: routine kept, steady response, patience. No need to start from zero.
This guide gives an overview and a starting point, age by age and topic by topic. It doesn't replace the detailed guides: to go deeper on any one point, each section links to the guide that covers it.
Go further
Bedtime routine: building a calming ritual, from ages 2 to 10
A good bedtime routine is three or four steps, always in the same order and at about the same time each night: a quick wash, pajamas, a story, lights out. Consistency matters more than length, and a ten-minute routine kept every night beats a forty-minute one twice a week.
Child sleep needs by age: the benchmarks that make a difference
Children need 14 to 17 hours of sleep out of 24 from birth to 3 months, 12 to 15 from 4 to 11 months, 11 to 14 at ages 1 to 2, 10 to 13 at 3 to 5, 9 to 11 at 6 to 13, and 8 to 10 from age 14. These are consensus ranges, not requirements.
Sleep and back-to-school: resetting bedtime gently
Start resetting your child's bedtime one to two weeks before school begins, not the night before, moving bedtime and wake-up 10 to 15 minutes earlier every two or three days. Morning light and the usual evening ritual help the body keep up. Allow two to three weeks if several shifts stack up.
Napping in children: how long it lasts and how it changes
Most children stop napping between 3 and 5 years old, though the age varies widely. In one meta-analysis, fewer than 2.5% had stopped before age two and 94% had stopped by age five. This guide covers the signs a child is ready to stop and how to manage the transition without a sleep debt.
Newborn sleep (0-3 months): rhythm and safe sleep
A newborn has no internal clock yet, so day and night get mixed up until the rhythm sets in, usually around 2 to 3 months. For safe sleep, place the baby on their back on a firm, flat surface with no soft objects for every nap and every night, ideally in the parents' room for the first six months.
Creating a sleep-friendly bedroom: temperature, darkness, noise
A sleep-friendly bedroom is cool, dark and not necessarily silent. The NHS recommends 16 to 20°C for an infant, lights are best dimmed in the half hour before bed, and sudden noises matter more than background sound. A practical order is light first, then temperature, then noise.
White noise for sleep: what the research does (and doesn't) show
White noise might help a child fall asleep, but this isn't proven: a 1990 study of forty newborns found an effect, while a 2021 review of thirty-eight studies rates the quality of the evidence as very low. If you try a machine, place it as far from the bed as possible, at the lowest volume.
Moving from a crib to a toddler bed: when and how
There is no fixed age to move a child from a crib to a toddler bed: most children switch between 18 months and 3 years, once they start climbing. The clearest sign is a child who gets a leg over the rail. Childproof the room first and keep the bedtime routine unchanged.
Jet lag in children: traveling without throwing everything off
To help a child with jet lag, shift bedtime by an hour a day for two or three days before departure, then get daylight during local daytime once you arrive. Expect about an hour and a half of recovery per day heading west and about an hour per day heading east, based on adult averages.
The clock change and your child's sleep: easing into winter time
Most children are back in their usual rhythm within one to two weeks of the clocks going back, provided they keep a consistent bedtime routine. You can move bedtime 10 to 15 minutes later each day beforehand, or switch straight to winter time and split the difference for the first few evenings.
Adjusting to sleep at daycare: a new rhythm to settle into
A child adjusts to sleeping at daycare gradually: naps follow the group's schedule, so falling asleep can take longer at first, and evening tiredness is common in the first weeks, fading after about three months. Keeping the same words and comfort object at home and daycare, and an earlier bedtime on tired evenings, helps.
Teen sleep: why everything changes
Teenagers go to bed late because, at puberty, the brain releases melatonin later in the evening, often an hour or more later than in childhood. This shift has been measured in the lab and is biological, not a lack of discipline. It clashes with early school starts, and morning light and a steady wake-up time help.
The child who refuses to go to bed
A child who refuses to go to bed is usually tired: what they resist is separation and the end of the day, not sleep. A limit announced beforehand, the same response every time and both parents responding alike make it hold. Adding steps to the routine usually backfires.
Night wakings and sleep regression in children: understanding them and getting through
A child who wakes at night again after sleeping well is usually going through a developmental regression, not the result of a mistake. It typically lasts two to six weeks and fades on its own. Keep the evening ritual identical and answer wakings with brief comfort. See a doctor if wakings persist past six to eight weeks.
Co-sleeping: how long it lasts and how to end it gently
After age one, there is no official age limit for co-sleeping, and for most families it is a stage: nearly half of the children who joined the parents' bed every night had stopped two years later. To end it gently, move in stages rather than overnight. Before age one, bed-sharing raises the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
Parasomnias in children: night terrors, nightmares, sleepwalking
Night terrors, nightmares and sleepwalking are very common in children and rarely a cause for concern; night terrors affect more than one child in two at some point. During a night terror or sleepwalking episode, stay near your child and keep them safe without waking them. See a doctor if episodes are very frequent or put the child in danger.
Sleep apnea and snoring in children: when to see a doctor
See a doctor when a child's snoring comes back most nights for several weeks with no cold to explain it, or comes with breathing pauses, restless sleep or marked daytime tiredness. Snoring during a cold is common and usually clears up with its cause. Only a clinical exam can tell harmless snoring from sleep apnea.
Bedwetting: understanding nighttime enuresis
Bedwetting is common: about 5% to 10% of 7-year-olds still wet the bed regularly, and it is no one's fault. It comes from a mismatch between nighttime urine production, bladder capacity and the ability to wake. See a doctor if it continues past age 6 or 7 and bothers the child.
Sleep bruxism in children: teeth grinding, possible causes, and when to see a doctor
Teeth grinding in children is usually not serious. Sleep bruxism is very common in children, with studies reporting between 13% and 49%, and it usually eases with age. See a dentist if the grinding happens most nights for several weeks, tooth wear shows, or the child has jaw pain or morning headaches.
Child insomnia: when the nights don't right themselves
Child insomnia is trouble falling or staying asleep that lasts for months, comes back most nights and affects the day, unlike a rough patch after a move or a new school year. Behavioral approaches are the best documented. See a doctor if it lasts beyond a few months despite a regular routine.
Night weaning and nighttime wakings: what we actually know
No study cited here shows that stopping night feeds makes a child sleep longer, and nothing requires you to stop around age one. If a waking has become a falling-asleep habit, weaning gradually over several weeks works better than dropping a feed outright. See a doctor if weight gain stalls or the child seems constantly hungry.
ADHD and sleep in children: two problems that feed each other
Yes, on average children with ADHD sleep worse: a meta-analysis of 722 children with ADHD and 638 controls found more bedtime resistance, trouble falling asleep and night wakings. The relationship runs both ways, since poor sleep also worsens ADHD symptoms. ADHD medication can change sleep too, so talk to the doctor before adjusting anything.
Early morning waking in children: understanding it and what to do
A child who wakes at 5 a.m. most often has a badly placed bedtime, a nap that runs long or late, a bright bedroom, or an established habit. A dark room, a fixed wake time and a bedtime adjusted in small steps help most. Wakings before 5 a.m. that persist warrant a medical opinion.
Why read a bedtime story to your child: what the science says
Reading a story in the evening has a measured, modest effect on a child's language. Studies also link it to the bond with the parent, and link the bedtime routine it belongs to with better sleep. This guide goes over what they show. To learn to tell a story without a book, see making up a bedtime story; for listening to a recorded voice, see audio stories.
Child language and vocabulary: the role of what you say to them every day
A child's language develops mostly through everyday back-and-forth with adults: the number of conversational turns predicts activity in the brain's language areas better than the number of words heard. Describing what you do, responding to the child and giving them time to answer are enough. Reading adds richer vocabulary, see the science of bedtime reading.
Making up a bedtime story: where to start
To make up a bedtime story with nothing prepared, build it around a character the child recognizes in four parts: a small problem, two or three failed attempts, a solution, then calm. End on a calm note and keep it to five to ten minutes. See also why read at bedtime.
Personalized bedtime stories: how it works, and what the research shows
A personalized story is built around the child, and a name, one loved object and one family member are enough. One small study of 18 preschool children found they retained more rare words from personalized passages. No study cited shows it helps a child fall asleep. See the science of bedtime reading.
Audio bedtime stories: what a recorded voice changes compared to reading
An audio story works when no one can read: a parent's recording or a calm narrated tale keeps the bedtime ritual going without a screen. It doesn't replace a parent's presence for an anxious child. A study of 91 adults found no comprehension difference between listening and reading, but it did not test children falling asleep.
Screens before bedtime: what real effect on a child's sleep
Yes, evening screens are linked to worse sleep in children and teenagers: later bedtime, longer time to fall asleep or shorter sleep. A review of sixty-seven studies found this link in nine out of ten. It is an association, not proof of cause. A screen-free last hour is a realistic starting point.
Fear of the dark and nighttime worries in children: understanding them to ease them
Fear of the dark is a normal developmental stage that affects most children: imagination develops faster than the ability to tell real threats from imagined ones. Acknowledge the feeling without confirming the threat, and give the child a tool they control, such as a night light. See a pediatrician if the fear lasts well past the usual age.
Daytime screen time: how much by a child's age
The WHO recommends no screen time before age two and at most one hour a day of sedentary screen time from two to four, with less being better. From age six, no official benchmark sets a number of hours, and the 3-6-9-12 guideposts work by age milestones instead. Screens right before bedtime have their own guide.
Evening meals and a child's sleep: what helps them sleep better
A little. Evening sugar shows a real but modest link to shorter sleep, hidden caffeine in chocolate, colas, iced tea and some ice creams can push back falling asleep, and dinner is best finished about an hour before the bedtime routine. Firm benchmarks are few, so adjust dinner without turning it into a protocol.
Separation anxiety and children's sleep: understanding it to help at bedtime
Separation anxiety at bedtime is a normal phase, with peaks around 8 to 10 months and 18 to 24 months. A brief, warm goodbye with the same phrase every night, and not going back at each protest, helps most. See a health professional if distress is intense or lasts more than a few weeks.
| Age | Hours of sleep per 24h |
|---|---|
| 0-3 months | 14-17 hours |
| 4-11 months | 12-15 hours |
| 1-2 years | 11-14 hours |
| 3-5 years | 10-13 hours |
| 6-13 years | 9-11 hours |
| 14-17 years | 8-10 hours |
Frequently asked questions
The benchmarks vary a lot by age: 14 to 17 hours in 24 from birth to 3 months, 12 to 15 hours from 4 to 11 months, 11 to 14 hours from 1 to 2 years, 10 to 13 hours from 3 to 5 years, 9 to 11 hours from 6 to 13, 8 to 10 hours from age 14 on (National Sleep Foundation, expert panel, 2015). These are ranges, not requirements. Look for a child who consistently sleeps below their range, rather than aiming for an exact number every night.
Because it's normal at any age: a child goes through more light-sleep transitions than an adult, so more chances to wake up. What changes over time is their ability to fall back asleep alone, not how often they wake. If a calm phase turns restless again (a motor, language, or teething leap, separation anxiety, a change of environment), allow two to six weeks for it to settle, without changing anything about the evening routine.
Not before the child shows the signs: repeated refusal for several days running with no visible tiredness late in the afternoon, increasingly long time to fall asleep at nap time, or a nap that systematically pushes bedtime late into the night. A single, isolated refusal means nothing. Dropping it too early mainly creates a sleep debt that the night doesn't always make up for, without necessarily making bedtime any easier.
Mainly before age one: bed-sharing then raises the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, especially if a parent smokes, drinks alcohol, is very tired, or if the sleep surface is soft; a separate but nearby bed is the safer choice in that case. After age one, the concern shifts to the safety of the space (a firm mattress, nothing the child could get stuck in), with no specific age that ends the practice.
Largely, yes: across sixty-seven studies that looked at the link between screens and sleep, nine times out of ten found a measurable effect (Hale & Guan, Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2015). What matters most is the last hour before bedtime, more than total daily screen time. An audio story or one read aloud in place of the screen is often enough, without needing a complete ban.
Two to six weeks on average, the time it takes the brain to process the new milestone (motor, language, or any other skill) that triggered the regression. The best lever for getting through it quickly: change nothing about the evening routine, and respond with brief comfort rather than a long negotiation.
See a doctor if any of these signs persist: no improvement in waking after six to eight weeks, visible daytime distress, noisy breathing or pauses during sleep, a clear change in appetite or behavior, or a nighttime fear that goes well beyond the age it usually appears. Outside of that, patience and consistency are enough in the vast majority of cases.
Sources
- Hirshkowitz, Whiton, Albert et al., "National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary," Sleep Health, 2015
- Sleep Foundation, "Infant Sleep Cycles: How a Baby's Sleep Changes With Age," accessed 2026
- Owens, Babcock & Weiss, "Evaluation and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Excessive Daytime Sleepiness," Clinical Pediatrics, 2020
- Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, "Signs of Exhaustion in Children," 2022
- Mindell, Li, Sadeh, Kwon & Goh, "Bedtime routines for young children: a dose-dependent association with sleep outcomes," Sleep, 2015
- Staton, Rankin, Harding, Smith, Westwood, LeBourgeois & Thorpe, "Many naps, one nap, none: a systematic review and meta-analysis of napping patterns in children 0-12 years," Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2019
- Goodlin-Jones, Burnham, Gaylor & Anders, "Night waking, sleep-wake organization, and self-soothing in the first year of life," Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 2001
- Marakovitz, Sheldrick, Copeland et al., "Associations of preschool reactive bed-sharing with sociodemographic factors, sleep disturbance, and psychopathology," Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 2023
- Hale & Guan, "Screen time and sleep among school-aged children and adolescents: a systematic review of the literature," Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2015
- World Health Organization, Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age, 2019
- Gordon, King, Gullone, Muris & Ollendick, "Nighttime fears of children and adolescents: frequency, content, severity, harm expectations, disclosure, and coping behaviours," Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2007
- Shih, Wu, Pan & Chang, "The Association Between Frequent Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Intake and Sleep Duration in School Children: A Cross-Sectional Study," Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022
- Meltzer, Wahlstrom, Plog & Strand, "Changing school start times: impact on sleep in primary and secondary school students," Sleep, 2021
- Tisseron, Serge, 3-6-9-12 guidelines for children's screen use, circulated since 2008
Their name, their worlds, their first story
Nine questions, three minutes. You watch their universe take shape, screen after screen, and their first episode, which is free, is written right away.
Try it freeThe first episode is on us, no card needed.