Find Your Child's Perfect Nap Schedule

One of the questions that I get asked most often is, “How often should my child be taking a nap?” My answer always depends on their child’s age. A good rule of thumb is to be looking for signs that your child is getting tired (rubbing their eyes, staring, yawning), but it’s pretty easy to miss those sleep cues if you aren’t sitting beside your child 100 percent of the time.

To help make things a little easier, I’ve put together a list of the average wake windows for each age. You can use these times to count forward from the time your child wakes up, to help figure out what time their next nap or bedtime should be. My goal with this is not to lock you into a schedule or make you feel like these are set in stone. Keep in mind these are averages. However, by knowing what the averages are, you will be able to recognize about when those sleep cues will start happening, so that you can begin your nap time routine.

Newborns

Newborns have a VERY short wake window. Typically they can only stay awake 60-90 minutes before they need to take another nap. It really does seem as if they are either eating or sleeping because often, they wake, eat for 45 minutes, get a diaper change, and then fall right back to sleep.

3-6 Months

By 3 months, you should start to see their wake windows stretch out to 1.5-2.5 hours. This is when you’ll be able to play a little more with them and start to see more of their sweet little personalities come out. Normally, at the beginning of this stage, naps are still pretty inconsistent. You may notice a routine starting to develop as they progress through this stage. By 6 months, most children have consolidated their sporadic naps into a more consistent sleep schedule. (Ex: 3 naps a day)

6-9 Months

This stage is a big transition stage for your baby. While your child might still have a wake window of 2.5 hours at 6 months, around the middle of month 8 that wake window will jump up to 3 hours as they begin to drop down from 3 naps a day, to only 2. If they are struggling with the 3 to 2 nap transition, you can move bedtime earlier to help ensure they are not overtired at bedtime.

9-14 Months

This age is the most consistent for the longest amount of time awake. Once your child has transitioned to two naps, you can expect their wake windows to be between 3-4 hours. You may notice that their wake windows are not consistent throughout the day. For example, the first wake window of the day may be 3 hours, their second wake window could be 3.5 hours, and then by the end of the day, that window extends to 4 hours right before bedtime.

14 Months-3 years

Whoo-hoo you made it to one nap!! Somewhere between 14 and 16 months, you will start to notice your child refusing their morning nap. This is when we make the transition to one nap a day and see their wake windows stretch out to 5-6 hours. This is another big transition time for your child and you might notice that instead of taking one nap a day consistently, they may need a second nap every 2/3 days. During this transition, flexibility is your superpower. Pay attention to how your child is acting and if you feel like they need a second nap, don’t be afraid to offer it! Once they are used to taking one nap a day, its smoothhhh sailing until they drop their nap all together.

One key thing I’d like to point out is that all children are different. There is no one in the world that knows your child better than you do, so if you feel like they are ready for a transition before the research says they should be, listen to your gut. You’ve got this!!

**If you want personalized support for your child’s sleep, please reach out to me at morgan@briarandbanks.com or book a discovery call HERE**