What's the best bed time for babies + toddlers?
Let’s talk sleep – And more specifically, bed times.
Both of our kids have always been great sleepers. Ava cannot be woken even if we change her clothes, stand her up, tickle her toes – nothing wakes this girl up and that’s how she’s always been since the newborn stage. Franky’s always been a great sleeper when it comes to night time and he loves his long naps (which is life-changing from Ava’s nonexistent napping schedule) but he wakes up so dang easily. We even breathe in his room and he’s awake immediately.
It’s terrible. But hey, I’d take it over having a bad sleeper so I guess I’m lucky there.
Franky goes to sleep 100% on his own –
We say a prayer with him, put him in his crib, shut the door and he just goes to sleep after a couple minutes of tossing and turning. It’s actually like magic. Yes, it took a little sleep training with the help of The Crib Coach but my goodness, it’s the polar opposite of our girl, Ava. She’s almost 4 and still insists we lay with her until she’s asleep. I cherish those moments sometimes but other times I just want to check out and sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing and she just won’t have it.
But let’s take a step back to when Ava was a baby…
Ava’s Bed Time at 9 months old: 10:00pm
Yes, I’m serious. And I bet you’re judging me for this. This was something I didn’t want to tell anyone at the time – I felt like a bad parent in a way admitting to this but hey, she slept through the night and woke up at a decent time and I was okay with that. And here’s the reason we pushed it so late:
Serious bed time struggles.
Bed time was the worst with her. She took forever to fall asleep, couldn’t go to sleep without being nursed to sleep and took hours to actually fall asleep deep enough for us to leave the room. Nightmare. So we thought – “If she’s more tired, then she will fall asleep faster, right?” And it worked. So 10:00pm it was. No matter how stupid we felt putting out 9 month old to bed at 10pm, we did it to avoid the terrible bed time stress.
And that worked great for us. Less stress at bed time = happiness for everyone involved.
And then she hit a stage where right around 8:15pm she would totally meltdown. I’m talking full blown tantrums, couldn’t control her emotions, made bed time even worse, kind of a mess. And so we pushed that bed time again – 8:00pm. Right before we knew the meltdowns would hit.
Ava’s Bed Time at 2 years old: 8:00pm
Ava’s Bed Time at 3 years old: 8:30pm
…because while it may seem very late for most of you, we wanted her to be able to spend time with her dad on the weekdays when he wouldn’t get home until pretty late from work. So we push it back just a bit so that the meltdowns wouldn’t be crazy but that she’d get that much needed daddy time.
Ava’s Bed Time at 3.5 years: 8:00pm
…because we realized we wanted to give ourselves more down time at night and we’d just had another baby. So putting her to bed first worked out great for us to have to peaceful, quiet nursing time and time to just relax before we went to bed ourselves.
Ava’s Bed Time at almost 4 yeas old: 7:30pm
And the past couple days her bed time has been between 6:30 and 7:30pm. And WHY, you ask? Meltdowns. We’re in that stage where meltdowns are daily (well usually, multiple times a day if I’m being honest) and pushing that bed time slightly earlier avoids a major super-tired meltdown which means she falls asleep faster which means smiles for everyone.
So what is the best bed time for a newborn, a baby, a toddler and a kid?
Whether it’s the time you get home from work and wanting to spend some extra hours with your kids, the amount of time it takes to get your kids to sleep at night, a good chunk of hours YOU personally want to be able to sleep each night, meltdown hour or whatever it may be, the best bed time for babies and toddlers at each age is the bed time you as a family decide is perfect for YOU.
Yes, you read all of that just for me to say that there is no answer to this question, in my personal opinion.
Adjust to your kids, change it based on your own schedule changes and adapt to what you currently have going on in your lives and do what’s best for you and don’t worry about what anyone else’s kids do.
Franky’s Bed time at 11 months old: 5:00pm.
Why? Because that’s when he gets tired and that’s when he basically begs to go to sleep every night. It gives me time to cook dinner, have some one-on-one time with Ava and for our family, that’s what time is best right now.
Since we’re on the topic of sleep, I did want to include this super helpful chart from The Crib Coach, our favorite baby sleep coach/consultant who has made all of our sleep dreams with Franky come true! Seriously. But I’ve found it very helpful to refer back to over the month’s so I wanted to put it here for all of you to save and reference when you need it!
