Toddler sleep needs are highly variable

Essential facts about how much sleep toddlers need

Here are four things to know about toddler sleep needs.

1. Some toddlers need up to twice as much sleep in a 24-hour period than other toddlers.

2. Low sleep need toddlers develop normally.

3. Accidentally expecting a toddler to sleep for longer than she needs in a 24-hour period can result in excessive night waking after a few weeks.

Estimates of your toddler's total sleep needs are unscientific

Multiple large research studies prove that toddler sleep needs remain highly variable.

• Some toddlers need a lot of sleep, even up to 15 hours or more in a 24-hour period. These little ones are at the high sleep need end of the bell curve.

• But a total of only eight or nine hours sleep in 24 hours is normal for other toddlers. These little ones are at the low sleep need end of the bell curve.

Yet you might still hear, for example, that good parents should have their toddler in bed for 12 hours overnight. Some sleep educators advise you to add up your toddler's hours of sleep over a 24-hour period, saying this gives you something to work towards.

This advice is not just unscientific. It can make sleep worse for your family. Toddler sleep needs are not only variable between children. Sleep is highly flexible and adaptive in the one toddler, over time. One day your toddler might take less sleep, the next day more.

If you're thinking that your toddler should be in a sleep situation for longer than she actually needs biologically, you might accidentally make your toddler's sleep more disrupted over the coming weeks or months. The expectation that your toddler should have big long naps during the day or early bed-times can gradually disrupt your toddler's body clock settings, especially if you have a low sleep need toddler. You can find out about this here.

Being given estimates of how much sleep your toddler needs, or asking you to count up your toddler's hours of sleep, actually causes many families a great deal of unnecessary stress and distress.

It's normal to watch the clock, hoping your toddler will go to sleep soon - but try not to!

Even when we're not worried about total amounts of sleep, it’s completely normal to find ourselves watching the clock during the day or the evening, longing for our precious little person to fall asleep! I remember doing that myself, all those years ago. Trying to get the toddler to sleep is a normal coping mechanism when we're exhausted. (And a mother or primary carer is often exhausted in a society where carers are expected to spend very long hours alone with a small child.)

Or we might find that we can only really get things done when our busy little person is sleeping, and we're hanging out to do something else, other than endlessly tending to him.

In The Possums Sleep Program, I invite you to practice a great deal of self-compassion, as you begin to experiment with a different way of thinking about the days and nights. My aim is to help you

• Have the most enjoyable day you can create, outside the house as much as possible, letting your toddler's sleep look after itself, and

• Make your toddler's night-time wakes just as easy as possible, so you're all back to sleep quickly.

If this sounds weird or unrealistic, I invite you to hang in there with me, and start checking the program out in greater depth. Usually it quickly starts to make sense!

Selected references

Galland BC, Taylor BJ, Elder DE, Herbison P. Normal sleep patterns in infants and children: a systematic review of observational studies. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2012;16:213-222.

Paavonen JE, Saarenpaa-Heikkila O, Morales-Munoz I, Virta M, Hakala N, Polkki P, et al. Normal sleep development in infants: findings from two large birth cohorts. Sleep Medicine. 2020;69:145-154.

Price A, Brown JE, Bittman M, Wake M, Quach J, Hiscock H. Children's sleep patterns from 0-9 years: Australian population longitudinal study. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2014;99:119-125.

Teng A, Bartle A, Sadeh A, Mindell J. Infant and toddler sleep in Australia and New Zealand. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. 2011;48:268-273.

Williams JA, Zimmerman FJ, Bell JF. Norms and trends of sleep time among US children and adolescents. JAMA Pediatrics. 2013;167:55-60.