Sleep by age
How much sleep does a 3 to 5 year old need?
Children aged three to five need 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours, naps included. This is the last age band where naps are in the number at all, and the year the nap goes is the year the bedtime has to move.
In short
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged 3 to 5 years sleep 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. This is the final band where daytime sleep counts toward the total; from age 6 the figures are given per night.
- Hours per 24, naps included
- 10 to 13Hours per 24, naps includedAASM, ages 3 to 5
- Last age counting naps
- 5Last age counting napsFrom 6 it is nights only
- Hour spread in the range
- 3Hour spread in the rangeBoth ends are normal
Preschoolers, 3 to 5 years
10 to 13hours per 24 hours, naps included
As published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in its consensus statement on recommended sleep duration. Quoted as a range because that is how it was issued: healthy sleepers in this band sit across the whole span, and a single number would be us inventing a precision the evidence does not have.
When the nap goes, the bedtime has to move
This is the transition that catches families out, because it is the first one where the total is supposed to stay roughly the same while the structure changes completely. Dropping an hour and a half of afternoon sleep does not reduce what a four year old needs; it moves that requirement into the night, and if the bedtime does not move with it the child is now short.
The visible symptom is usually not tiredness. An overtired preschooler is more often wired, resistant and harder to settle than obviously sleepy, which is why the honest response to a suddenly difficult bedtime in this age band is frequently an earlier one rather than a firmer one.
The last band before school sets the schedule
From six onwards the wake time stops being a family decision. School fixes it, and everything else has to be arranged backwards from there. The years before that are the last opportunity to establish a bedtime that will still clear the requirement once the morning is no longer negotiable.
That arithmetic is the same one adults do on /wake-up-at, and it is worth doing once properly at this age. A 7am school run and a ten hour requirement puts lights out at eight in the evening plus whatever the child takes to fall asleep, which is earlier than most families assume until they count it.
Regularity is doing more work than the total
The consensus figures are about duration because duration is what the evidence base measures, and it is not the only thing that matters. A schedule that holds across the week is easier for a body clock to settle into than one that moves by two hours at weekends, and that is as true at four as it is at forty.
For an adult the measure of that steadiness is the sleep regularity index, and the argument for prioritising it over squeezing out extra hours is at /blog/a-steady-schedule-beats-extra-sleep.
What is actually different at this age
The total is the headline. These are the things that change underneath it, and they are usually what somebody is really asking about.
What changes
- The nap disappears somewhere in this band, and unlike the earlier transitions the night has to lengthen to absorb it.
- Bedtime becomes a fixed social event rather than a response to sleepiness, which is the first time the schedule is imposed rather than followed.
- Sleep is now almost entirely nocturnal, so the 24 hour figure and the night figure have nearly converged by the fifth birthday.
Where an app stops being the right tool
Stated plainly rather than buried, because a sleep app writing about sleep has an obvious incentive not to.
Limits worth knowing
- Tock is built for the adult it belongs to. It is not a child monitor and it is not tested on children.
- A shared room means a phone is listening to more than one sleeper, and it has no way to separate them.
- Anything about a child sleeping that worries you is a question for a doctor rather than an app.
Tock estimates sleep and is not a medical device. Nothing here is medical advice, a diagnosis, or a substitute for one. If sleep is genuinely not working, that is a conversation for a doctor rather than for an app or an article.
Questions people ask
How much sleep does a 4 year old need?
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours for children aged 3 to 5, including any nap. A four year old who has dropped the nap needs that whole total at night, which usually means an earlier bedtime than the family had before.
When do children stop napping?
Somewhere in the three to five band for most children, with a wide spread either side. The AASM recommendation covers the 24 hour total rather than how it is split, so a child who has stopped napping needs the same total from the night alone.
Why is my preschooler harder to settle since dropping the nap?
Often because the bedtime has not moved to absorb the sleep the nap used to provide. Being short on sleep at this age tends to present as being wired and resistant rather than obviously sleepy, so a difficult bedtime can be a symptom of a late one rather than a discipline problem.
Other age bands
The same consensus statement, read for a different age.
- How much sleep toddlers needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged 1 to 2 years sleep 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. Most of that has consolidated into the night by the second birthday, with one daytime nap doing the rest.
- How much sleep school-age children needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged 6 to 12 years sleep 9 to 12 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis. By this age sleep has consolidated into the night, so the figure is effectively a nightly one and the bedtime has to be counted backwards from the school run.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- RoundupsThe best smart alarm apps, and what smart should meanTock is the best smart alarm app on iPhone. It watches the 30 minutes before your alarm using two signals, movement and sound, rings early if it catches a lighter moment, and falls back to your set time no matter what. Sleep Cycle is the long-established alternative, and Pillow is the better pick if you already wear an Apple Watch to bed.
- Wake timesWaking up at 9:00amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 9:00am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 12:30amWhere to put the alarm after a 12:30am lights-out.
- NapsThe 10 minute napA 10 minute nap lifts alertness without taking you into slow wave sleep, so you wake up clear rather than groggy. It is the safest nap to take close to work or driving, and it does nothing for memory consolidation, which needs considerably longer.
- Wake tonesCustom alarm soundTock comes with 18 wake tones, and if none of them suit you it takes your own audio as the alarm instead. Whatever you choose still gets scheduled through Apple's AlarmKit, so the silent switch, an active Focus and a fully closed app have no bearing on whether it rings.
- Head to headSleep Cycle vs SleepScoreIf you want one app that watches the night and also rings in the morning, Sleep Cycle. If you only want the measurement, and you want the method explained rather than asserted, SleepScore.
Knowing the number is the easy half
Hitting it is the other one. Tock measures what you actually got rather than what the schedule allowed for, and wakes you at a lighter moment inside the last half hour.