Is my toddler getting enough sleep on a low sleep schedule?
Standard recommendations often suggest 11 to 14 hours of daily sleep, but low-sleep-need toddlers naturally fall outside these guidelines by sleeping less and keeping erratic hours. Because their routines are all over the place, parents are left constantly second-guessing whether their child's late bedtimes and shorter nights are actually harmful.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1pushing bedtime later to match the child's natural sleep cuesDid this help you?
- 2consulting a pediatrician to verify lower sleep totals are healthyDid this help you?
- 3keeping bedtimes completely the sameDid this help you?
- 4incrementally pushing back the bedtime routine by an hour as the child agesDid this help you?
- 5letting children stay up later on weekends while keeping weeknight bedtimes strictDid this help you?
- 6Dropping the afternoon nap entirelyDid this help you?
- 7Capping the duration of the nap and waking the child by a strict timeDid this help you?
- 8Requesting daycare or preschool not to allow napsDid this help you?
- 9Shifting bedtime earlier or later depending on whether a nap occurredDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“So we have an almost 5 year old her bedtime is 7 and baring out of ordinary situations she’s asleep by 715/730, but she’s also an early riser 5a-6a.”source ↗
“If you also had strict bedtimes about what age did that start to change? Or did you start with letting them stay up later on the weekends or just keep it all the same.”source ↗
“His sleep has been horrendousssss and I’ve never really been able to figure out a solid sleep schedule (ie 7-7) because he’s just all over the place”source ↗
“if he’s falling asleep around 9 and waking up anywhere between 6-7am, should I be worried that he isn’t getting his recommended hours of sleep (11-14 hrs)?”source ↗
“My 2.5 years old toddler is a low sleep need kid.”source ↗
“My kid is 3. Always been a terrible sleeper - takes hours to go down. The only way bedtime isn’t a miserable affair is if we don’t do a nap.”source ↗
“My 4 year old still needs a nap on days she goes to school but if she naps too long she wont go down until 10pm.”source ↗
“We had to ask our preschool to not allow naps otherwise bedtime turned into 10-11pm even at 3.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 2How do I make a daily schedule for a 3-month-old when returning to work?
- 2Do you enforce bedtimes at sleepovers?
- 2Should my kindergartener still nap on weekends?