What Time Should My Baby Go to Bed?

Most babies and toddlers between 4 and 36 months do best with a bedtime between 6:30 and 8:00 pm, calculated backward from the end of the last nap rather than set by the clock alone. A later bedtime does not produce a later wake-up — it usually produces more night wakings and an earlier morning.

By age, as a starting point:

4 to 5 months: 6:30 to 7:30 pm, about 1.5 to 2.5 hours after the last nap ends.

6 to 8 months: 6:30 to 7:30 pm, about 2.5 to 3.25 hours after the last nap ends.

9 to 12 months: 6:30 to 7:30 pm, about 3.25 to 4 hours after the last nap ends.

13 to 18 months: 7:00 to 8:00 pm, about 4 to 5.5 hours after the nap ends.

18 to 36 months: 7:00 to 8:00 pm, about 5 to 5.5 hours after the nap ends.

The thing I most want parents to hear: a later bedtime does not buy you a later morning. It’s the most intuitive idea in baby sleep and it’s backwards. An overtired baby produces more cortisol, which makes it harder to fall asleep, causes more night wakings, and reliably produces an earlier wake-up. If your baby is up at 5am, the answer is usually an earlier bedtime, not a later one.

Signs bedtime is too late: your baby fights bedtime hard, gets a second wind, wakes frequently in the first half of the night, or is up before 6am.

Signs bedtime is too early: your baby takes more than 20 to 30 minutes to fall asleep while calm and content, or has a long wakeful stretch in the middle of the night.

A note for working parents, because this comes up constantly. If you get home at 6:30, the answer isn’t to push bedtime to 8:30. It’s usually to move your connection time to the morning and protect a slightly earlier bedtime, or to build the routine so you’re in it together. There’s a version of this that works for your actual life, and finding it is part of what a plan is for.