Sleep by age
How much sleep does a toddler need?
Children aged one to two need 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours, naps included. The interesting part of that number is not the total, it is that the daytime portion is about to start disappearing.
In short
The 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.
- Hours per 24, naps included
- 11 to 14Hours per 24, naps includedAASM, ages 1 to 2
- Naps by the second birthday
- 1Naps by the second birthdayDown from two or more
- Hour spread in the range
- 3Hour spread in the rangeNarrower than infancy
Toddlers, 1 to 2 years
11 to 14hours 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.
The nap is where the total actually moves
Between one and two the headline figure drops by about an hour against infancy, and almost all of that comes out of the day rather than the night. The second nap disappears, typically between twelve and eighteen months, and what is left is a single daytime sleep that will itself be gone within a few years.
This is why parents often report that a toddler is sleeping less without sleeping worse. The night may be unchanged or longer. The 24 hour total has fallen because a nap left, which is development rather than a problem.
Consolidation changes what a broken night means
In the first year a fragmented night is the normal state and not evidence of anything. By two it usually is not, because sleep has consolidated, and a night that keeps breaking has become worth paying attention to rather than waiting out.
What it is worth paying attention to is a question for somebody who can examine a child, and this page is not going to guess at it. The reason it is mentioned at all is that the same fragmentation which meant nothing at six months does not automatically mean nothing at two years, and parents are often told to keep waiting on the strength of advice written for a younger child.
Nothing here is medical advice. Anything about a child sleeping that concerns you belongs in front of a doctor.
What this does to the adults
The reason a sleep app is on this page at all is the parent. Adult sleep through the toddler years is usually intact in total and broken in structure: enough hours, in the wrong number of pieces, at slightly the wrong times. That combination produces a specific complaint, which is feeling unrested after what the clock says was a full night.
The measurable part of that is how many times the night breaks and how long each break lasts, and it is the part people are worst at estimating from memory. /guides/sleep-tracking-without-a-wearable covers what a phone can and cannot establish about that, which stops well short of what most trackers imply.
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 second nap goes, usually somewhere between twelve and eighteen months, and the total drops with it rather than being made up at night.
- Sleep is mostly consolidated into the night now, so a broken night starts being a signal rather than the baseline.
- Bedtime resistance appears, and it is behavioural rather than physiological: the child is not less sleepy, they have discovered that going to bed is negotiable.
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
- Nothing in Tock is designed for or tested on a child, and the app is not a monitor of any kind.
- A phone tracking a room cannot separate one sleeper from another, so a device on an adult nightstand in a shared room is measuring a mixture.
- Persistent difficulty sleeping at this age is worth raising with a doctor rather than solving with 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 many hours should a toddler sleep?
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours for children aged 1 to 2, including naps. Most of that is night sleep by the second birthday, with a single daytime nap making up the rest.
When do toddlers drop to one nap?
Usually somewhere between twelve and eighteen months, though the spread is wide and the AASM recommendation is about the 24 hour total rather than about how it is divided. The total falling by an hour across this period is normal and mostly comes out of the day.
Is 10 hours of sleep enough for a toddler?
It is below the recommended 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours, but that figure covers day and night together. A toddler sleeping ten hours at night plus a two hour nap is inside the range. Ten hours as a 24 hour total is not, and is worth mentioning to a doctor.
Other age bands
The same consensus statement, read for a different age.
- How much sleep babies needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that infants aged 4 to 12 months sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. Sleep at this age is spread across the day rather than consolidated into one block, and the total is what the recommendation is about.
- 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.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 8:30pmWhere to put the alarm after a 8:30pm 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 tonesGentle alarm soundsA gentle alarm works when it catches you at a light moment and fails when it lands in the heaviest part of your night, which is a timing problem rather than a volume one. Tock watches movement and sound across the 30 minutes before your alarm and rings early at a lighter moment if it finds one, with your set time as the fallback.
- Head to headRise vs SleepScoreIf you will genuinely change your bedtime because an app asked you to, Rise is the more useful of the two. If you want the night measured properly without wearing anything, SleepScore.
- FeaturesAlarm on silentTock's alarms are registered with iOS through Apple's AlarmKit framework rather than played by the app in the background. That is why they ring with the ringer off, through a Focus, with Tock closed, on the native full-screen alert.
- Sleep soundsDistant stormFar-off thunder helps at the start of the night because the slow rolling swells give your attention something easy to follow while it lets go, and it hurts later because every roll is a change in level, which is exactly what surfaces a light sleeper. Tock treats it as a fall-asleep aid and fades it out after half an hour by default.
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.