Reading another thread got me thinking: How much sleep, generally, do toddlers/preschoolers really need, and do all toddlers/preschoolers need the same amount?

Julian is usually asleep between 9 and 9:30. Every once in a while he'll go to sleep by 8:30, and every once in a while he'll be awake until 10:00 or later (his record is 11:15 :eek: - not screaming, just not sleeping). He's usually up by 7:00 on weekends, sometimes by 6:30, sometimes earlier still - I wake him up around 6:30-6:45 during the week so we can get ready for daycare. He naps at daycare, sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours, sometimes not at all. He doesn't nap on weekends - he's napped a total of three times since we switched to the big boy bed in January, twice when he fell asleep on the floor and once when he actually napped in the bed, when he was sick and had slept very fitfully the night before. No nap doesn't mean earlier bedtime, although it may take a little less time for him to fall asleep. No nap doesn't mean sleeping later the next morning (if it's on a weekend) - he's still up by 7 at the latest except in very rare circumstances (i.e., once in a blue moon he'll sleep until 7:45). He's never, even as an infant, slept for 12 hours at a stretch. He's slept 11 hours at a stretch once. Usually he sleeps for about nine hours of a night, maybe ten. This happens regardless of whether he naps.

If he truly needed more sleep, wouldn't it stand to reason that he'd sleep in later on weekends when he could? I don't wake him up on weekends. I don't get up until I hear him (or until he runs into my room yelling, "Hey, mama, let's go!" :lol: ), and I don't go right away. I wait until he's calling for me, saying he wants to get down (he'll generally stay there until I come get him, unless I take too long :lol: ). Given that he wakes up so early anyway, I'm very hesitant to start pushing bedtime back to 8:45 or 8:30 or earlier, because I'm concerned he'll sleep his nine hours and then be up before 6:00 instead of before 7:00.

I was just wondering. I want him to get enough rest, but I don't want to worry myself over it if it's possible he's doing all right as he is. Besides, his current wake-up time works well on weekdays - if he woke up between 5 and 6, I'd be in the bathroom, and I'd hate for him to be roaming free once Kevin moves out (which is happening on Friday) while I'm in the shower and can't hear anything.

I believe I read (just yesterday while culling out some old magazines) that toddlers need 11 or 12 hours of sleep.

But is that just a general rule, or do *all* toddlers need that much? :dunno: That's my question - Julian's never seemed to need that much, he never takes advantage of the opportunity to sleep longer when it's available (like on weekends, when no one is up and stirring to wake him up, no one is waking him up earlier than usual to get ready for school, etc.). I'd think if his body needed the sleep, he'd keep on sleeping, but maybe I'm wrong. :dunno:

Question - Is that 11-12 hrs total, including a good nap, or is that just the nighttime sleep?

As you know, Lisa, Rebekah is like Julian. I really don't think she needs the extra sleep. She's a very active child, she has been since she was born, and she simply doesn't sleep as much as some kids. No nap will sometimes mean an earlier bedtime but not usually. And it does not mean that she will sleep later in the morning.

Rebekah gets 9 hrs of sleep during the night (10pm-7am), sometimes more, and then takes a 2 hr nap each afternoon.

DH doesn't NEED alot of sleep. He only gets about 5-6 hrs of sleep a night on average. More sleep just makes him sluggish and grumpy. :dunno:

No, it doesn't stand to reason that he'd sleep later if he needed it as over-tired children actually sleep LESS. Lisa, I am unsure of Julian's age but I think about 18 months (??) - if so, he should be getting around 13.5 total hours of sleep per day.

9 months: 14 total hours, including 2 naps
1 year: 13.75 total hours, including 2 naps
18 months: 13.5 total hours, including 1 nap
Age 2: 13 total hours, including 1 nap
Age 3: 12 total hours, including 1 nap
From: Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems

That said, this is a general rule of thumb. All the families I have helped fall into this range within a 1 hour-ish window. Some kids require less sleep than others but out of the more than 30 families I have helped (both locally and online), none have required less than 10 hours total sleep per day (that's not to say they don't exist but I would question it, JMHO).

The best way to tell if a child needs more sleep is by their behavior. If he doesn't have a grouchy/crabby time, a time when he cries more than usual, a time he zones out with a video, a time when he gets into more trouble than usual, a time when he gets frustrated more easily, a time when he gets rather needy, he's probably just fine. :aok:

Lauren comes from two parents that NEED and TAKE their sleep! ;) She sleeps anywhere from 10 -12 hours a night and then takes anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hour nap.. however last night she slept for 12.5 hours and skipped her nap today.. and she didn't get sleepy/grumpy until about 8pm.. I always try to make sure that with night and nap sleep she gets 12 hours, atleast.

Like everything, there is a range of normal. Joe is definitely on the high end of normal. He's 3.5 and he sleeps 11-12 hours at night and still takes a 2 hour nap (or longer).

Dennis

Julian is almost 3, same as my son. Jacob gets put to bed ~8:00 at night, he usually falls asleep between 8:30 and 9:00. I have to usually drag his butt outta bed around 6:45 or 7:00. He takes about a 2 hour nap at daycare during the day :nod: I think thats plenty :)

Suzi, Julian will be 3 in July. :) And as a rule, he doesn't have any specific times where he's grumpier than others. He has certain things that are more likely to trigger fits than other things, but those things do it no matter the time of day, no matter if he's napped or not, no matter if he's slept 2 hours or 12. Watching TV - ha, I use the term "watch" loosely. :lol: His watching a video consists of standing up, dancing/jumping to the music of whatever we're watching, playing with trains, running into the kitchen to see what mama is doing, running to his room to read a couple of books, running down the hall to see what daddy is doing, running into the playroom to play with his trucks, coming back for a brief interlude in front of the TV, and starting the whole thing over again. :lol: If he ever *sits* still for more than about three minutes, off goes the TV, it's bedtime, because he just doesn't do that very often.

And to me, the fact that he's never slept for 11 or 12 hours at a stretch on a regular basis says a lot to me. Maybe I'm way wrong, but he's just never been one to do that. He's always been an early riser. When he was about 18 months old, he once woke up at about 2:45 AM, ready to go. :eek: I drank lots of coffee that morning. :lol: And the early wake-up time didn't mean he took more of a nap, didn't get him to bed much earlier. It just meant he kept on going a lot longer. :lol:

I will say, though, that there are days where I would pay for him to take a nap. :lol: I sure do miss those weekend naps. I told Kevin this was his fault, he gave up naps around age 3 - his mom told me that if it was light outside, Kevin wasn't napping. My gene pool knows how to appreciate a proper nap! :lol: I don't need much sleep, though - I usually do all right with about 5-6 hours of sleep.

I'll just keep an eye on him, and worry about trying to push back bedtime if it becomes an issue. Maybe, too, getting him potty trained will help - sometimes he'll wake up in the mornings just soaked, and of course he doesn't want to go back to sleep after that. Lately, though, he doesn't wake up soaked nearly as much, but he's still up early. :dunno: Who knows?! Watch, he'll get to be a teenager and I won't be able to pry him out of bed with a 10-foot pole. :lol:

Lisa - Rebekah will not nap in HER bed on the weekends. But she will nap in MY bed. Just an idea for you to try.

Brooke, I've tried - Julian won't nap in my bed, either. He'll tell me he wants to lay down, wants to cover up, will lay down with mama - and in about three seconds, BOINK, he jumps up and says, "Mama, I get up now!" :lol: So I'm not sure that would work. I'd say I'd just leave him in there, but my bed is really tall (the top of the mattress is probably almost three feet off the floor) and I'd be nervous about leaving him there alone. He can get down by himself, and he can also fall off (we've done that twice, YIKES). It was a good thought, though! :) I still think no naps is Kevin's fault. :lol:

Bianca goes down at 8-8:30 and wakes up at 6-6:30 and takes a nap sometimes in the day for about 2 hrs. She is 22 months.

OK, help. Sleep is getting worse. It generally takes Julian an hour or more to settle at night. Tonight he was in bed by 8:00, it's 9:15 now and he's *just* starting to drop off to sleep. This is every night, doesn't matter if I start the routine early or late, it takes him this long. He's been up past 10:00 at least two nights this week. And his wake-up times are getting earlier. He used to sleep until 7:30 or so on weekends, when left to his own devices. That's been moving back to 7:00, then 6:45, then 6:30. This morning he woke up at 5:56. :banghead: I *know* he's tired. I *know* he isn't getting enough sleep - 10 to 6 is barely enough for me, much less for a busy almost-3-year-old. But how do I get him to sleep more?!

In the evenings, I'm sort of a prisoner of my schedule. With work and commuting, I don't get home much before 6:30. By the time I get dinner ready and Julian fed, it can be 7:30 or 8:00, depending on what we have and on whether I had errands to run on the way home. If bathtime is quick, he'll be in bed by 8:30. This means he may not be asleep until sometime between 9:30 and 10:00, and then he'll be up by 6:30 the next morning. There's got to be some way to make bedtime easier, even if I can't necessarily make it earlier during the week - just to where it doesn't take him an hour to unwind. I've already got rules down that we don't play with noisy toys before bed, we read three or four books before I turn out the light and that's it. And I'm not sure how much of this restlessness is due to Kevin moving out - he's been out about a week now. He's always been restless, but the hour-long bedtimes were never an every night thing before. Now it's almost guaranteed. He doesn't scream, doesn't fuss, he just won't stay in bed and won't settle down and sleep. :banghead: And the really frustrating thing is, sometimes he'll settle for 10 or 15 minutes, and I'll think he's going on to sleep. Then I hear the rustle of the sheet and the padding of little feet coming down the hall, and he's still up.

And I'm worried he really isn't getting enough rest. If he's only sleeping 8-8 1/2 hours at night, even if he takes a 2-hour nap at daycare, that isn't 11 hours total. Today he was up from 6 AM to 9 PM - that's a 15-hour day with no rest. That wears *me* out, and I have no idea how he keeps going.

Suggestions? Thoughts? I'm it for bedtime, and besides my concern about him not getting enough sleep, these repeated drawn-out bedtimes are taking a toll on me as well.

Found this on the Sleep Lady site, http://www.sleeplady.com:

Ask yourself these questions:
Do you have to wake your child almost every morning?
Does your child fall asleep almost every time he/she is in the car?
Does your child seem cranky, irritable or overtired during the day?
On some nights, does your child seem to crash much earlier than his usual bedtime?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, your child may not be getting enough sleep. It is more important to focus on your child's behavior than the actual number of hours of sleep. As a rule of thumb, the more children sleep at night, the better behaved they will be!

Below are some general guidelines as to how many hours of sleep the AVERAGE child requires at various ages.

AGE NIGHTIME SLEEP DAYTIME SLEEP TOTAL SLEEP
3 years 10 1/2 1 1/2 (1 nap) 12

(taken from "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Dr. Richard Ferber).

Maybe Julian is getting enough sleep - for him. :dunno: I don't have to wake him up most mornings (he may see me and tell me to go away, but he wakes himself up!). He hardly ever falls asleep in the car. He's busy, opinionated and strong-willed, but he's not usually particularly cranky or irritable unless he's being thwarted in something he wants to do, and he doesn't seem overtired very often. Every once in a great while he'll crash earlier than usual - like maybe 8:30 instead of 9:00 or 9:30. Every once in an even greater while he'll crash before 8:00. But it's not a regular occurrence - not like he always goes to sleep earlier on weekends when he doesn't take a nap. (Don't I wish. :lol: ) And on days he's at school, he may not be too far off from 12 hours of sleep total - 9-10 at night, and 1 1/2 to 2 at school. It' s just weekends that he doesn't get that naptime.

No, it seems like our biggest issue is being able to settle down long enough to realize he's tired so he'll go on to sleep. And he probably gets that from his dad - Kevin is the same way, he has a hard time turning his mind off so he can rest. We have a routine at bedtime, I turn off a lot of lights and keep it quiet (no noisy toys in the bed!), I've tried aromatherapy baths and oils that are supposed to be soothing and restful. I don't know what else to try to keep him in bed and help him settle down. Any suggestions? Is this just a function mostly of age and something he'll (hopefully) grow out of? Thoughts welcome!

Anna's best with at least 13 hours... often better with closer to 14 hours. That's total sleep - night time and nap.