Episode 162: The 12 Month Sleep Regression & Nap Schedule Shift

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Welcome to the kids sleep Show podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep, and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes, and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. And I’m on a mission to change how the world view sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children, and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built. So let’s sleep together. Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids sleep Show podcast. My name is Courtney Zentz, the founder of tiny transitions and the creator of the sleep Steps program. I am so excited to be chatting with you today all about your baby’s first birthday. 12 months is such a pivotal time, it is so exciting to see little ones starting to stand and to walk and to babble and talk. And I feel like every single age I was like this is my favorite. No, this is my favorite. I’ll tell you, my kids are now eight and 10. And this is my favorite, but it’s gonna grow and change for you. But the good part about being 12 months old is things do start to baseline out I know the whole first year of life can be just so many sleep regressions and nap schedules and nap transitions and when will baby sleep through the night and we are finally at a point where baby should be sleeping through the night and has the biological ability to do so. And they should get that consolidated restorative independent sleep and be settling pretty easily for bedtime. Now, if you’re here and you’re listening, you might be facing some trouble. And a lot of it actually starts with the timing for a child and what to do at 12 months to make sure that they’re not overtired. Especially because they’re super active. So for 12 months, and what your sleep schedule should look like what your bedtime should look like, and then ultimately what your awake time should look like. Let me take you through a little bit of this transition that you’re going to have happening right now. I think the transition from two naps to one nap at this age is something that is kind of going to depend on your day time. Well, what do I mean by that? So if your child is in daycare, they have a set schedule. And so depending on what time of year, your child turns 12 months, depending on the daycares policy, when they move kids up to the next room, that can really be indicative of when your child moves to one nap. Because if the daycare says hey, everybody’s moving to one nap, including yours, you’re going to one nap, right. If you’re home or you have a nanny or provider, you’re

staying home to raise your family, which is lovely, you have a little bit more flexibility and probably another month or two to really keep that to nap schedule, if it’s working for you. And then decide, hey, it’s time to move to one nap. Now baby is showing signs of readiness, which we’ll talk about. So for me, my kids the day they turned one, it was a one nap schedule, I actually really love the consistency of that the really long restorative nap the ability for me to get some things done, frankly, around the house. But also, I just felt like I had a little more normalcy when we hit that point as a parent. And I’m a very type a person. So for me schedules for like really good. Now, that being said, A to nap schedule is also pretty predictable, frankly, after about seven months of age through somewhere between 12 and 15 months when kids move to that single nap a day. So I want to go over a couple kind of general things that you need to understand when it comes to this age. Because sometimes you’re going to push your kid to go to one nap if they’re in daycare, and that’s what they’re doing. And they move right up to that room. And they might be a bit tired when they come home. And it might take a week or two for them to adjust to that shift to one nap because it’s a big change for them. And they’ve got to get their body used to that longer restorative sleep versus two short naps, and then they’ve got to be ready for bed. So when we talk about first and foremost, a schedule for a 12 month old, okay, the generalized week window for a child at this age is between three and four hours. Okay. That being said, they have the ability to go just a touch longer.

If they’re on a two naps a day schedule, or a one nap a day schedule from the second nap, or the end of the first nap to bedtime.

What do I mean by that? I do see that kids can kind of go like four to four and a half hours sometimes going into bed time, but you have to really monitor for signs of overtired. In many situations, I really kind of like to stick to a seven, seven day. Okay, especially if your kids in daycare, that’s pretty much the schedule you’re going to need to be on because most daycares will do a nap 1245 to three o’clock when it’s a single nap, or you’ll have like a 10 o’clock nap, and then a 230 nap, give or take for a two nap schedule, which we’ll talk about, okay, every baby’s going to be a little bit unique, but I really want that sweet spot for bedtime to be seven o’clock. Now. I’ll give you some leeway. I know life’s not perfect and everything is super busy. anywhere between seven and eight o’clock, you can make work for bedtime if you’re home. Okay, but if your child is at daycare, and they are getting up at three o’clock from that first nap and the only nap, they’re now taking at 12 months, you got to put them to bed at seven o’clock. There’ll be waste thrown out and overtired. Okay, you still need to protect overtired. Because that’s really the most important part of trying to balance a day for a child and knowing that it’s going to take them a little bit to get there. If you’re pushing your child from a two nap schedule to a one nap schedule. And you’re finding that like at 11 o’clock, they’re pooped. But then at the end of the day, because they took an early nap at 11. They’re a mess, but you don’t want them to sleep because then they won’t go to bed. Really just try to crowbar your way to that single nap get there as quickly as you can use food, sunlight and a little bit of water, all kinds of sensory stimulating things, to get them to just get to 1230. Like I would so much rather a child be a little bit overtired going into the first nap versus overtired going into bed time, if that makes sense. So what I want to share is kind of the sample of what a two nap schedule looks like for a 12 month old and then the sample of what a one nap schedule looks like for a 12 month old, okay? If you’re still on a two nap schedule, and they’re really doing well with it, right, I would stay there. Now if I was on a seven to seven day, my first nap would always be fixed at 10am. Okay, your child’s either going to take a 10 to 11 o’clock nap, a 10 to 1130 nap or a 10 to 12 o’clock nap. Okay, and if that’s the case, three hours later, so if it’s 10 to 11, then they’re gonna sleep, traditionally, two to four. If it’s 10 to 1130, they’re gonna sleep 230 to four. And if it’s 10 to 12, they’re gonna sleep three to four, at 12 months, they need that amount of sleep in the day, it’s the right week window, it’s the balance, a child can do well with that, when you start to notice that, that second nap either becomes a fight to go down becomes super, super short, when for months, it was very predictable, right? Those are some of those signs that you’re ready to move to one nap. And so if your child is currently on that 10 o’clock, you’ve got to get to that 1230 point where you lay them in the crib, as I just mentioned, kind of as quickly as possible, spend a couple of days know that you can really do it and get them there and just get them there. Right? Fight through a little bit of overtired. Because once you’re there, you’re there in moving to one nap now with one nap a day, the ideal kind of traditional schedule, especially if your kids in daycare, and mine were for five years, so I’m very versed in that is a child waking anywhere between kind of six and eight in the morning. Most kids it’s between six and seven. Okay, natural body clock sunlights coming up, right? That’s first nap. And at daycare, you know, or the only nap is going to be really kind of laying down or starting that process at 1230 Kids settling by 1245 and then them waking everyone up by three o’clock. Okay? If that’s the case, and your child is up by three o’clock, they’re going to need to go to bed at seven. They will absolutely not make anything later. So I know some parents are like, gosh, we really like don’t get to spend a ton of time with them after work and I get it I was there. It’s basically like come home from work, we eat dinner, we play for a few minutes, and then they go to bed. But you know what they need the sleep. And it is better for them. And their schedule. If they’re waking up at three o’clock at 12 months old, they have to go to bed at seven they’ll just be so overtired, which causes tears at bedtime. Multiple overnight wakings and early morning waking so the 12 month 13 Month 14 Month 15 month schedule is 1245 to three o’clock. It’s really not until you kind of hit to that you start to notice things dial back to like to 45 to 30 because their sleep need is less but you want to keep their bedtime fixed because that’s what they obviously best align to. In you know the overall kind of general baseline of the day. Now I have some families who are at home have a little more flexibility with timing. If you prefer an eight to eight day you’re basically just adjusting everything I’m talking about out by one hour. Okay? So that’s kind of how you would manage it.

And then at 12 months, you’re probably starting to incorporate solids or snacks, you know, so you’re shifting off of like more milk and moving over to like food and then milk becoming kind of that snack.

You know, depending on your family’s choice as far as feeding goes, so

how much sleep does a 12 month old need, just so you have a baseline, it’s really between 13 and 15 hours, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. And I really still love a bedtime for a 12 month old of between seven and eight o’clock, but again, dependent on your day and what your situation is, I will tell you, I have clients that have like a bad afternoon nap, if they’re still on to or the Amazon guy rings the doorbell and wakes your child up from a nap early, and then they won’t resettle and then your timings dumpster fire, all you have to do is put them to bed early, I promise you, I’ve put kids to bed as early as like 530 or six o’clock and they sleep 13 hours that night, right? They’re tired, their body just wants to go to bed, it doesn’t know what time it is. So just put them to bed and let them sleep through the night to make sure it’s nice and calm and cool and dark in their room. And you’ll be in good shape. So the next thing you want to look at is the wakeup process of the nap. Right, I would advise that you don’t actually just go in and go, Hey, we got right, I would advise that you kind of go in and open the window, right or open the blinds or open the door and let the natural noise, the natural light, turn the sound machine off, wake your child up from the nap. Because it actually can be kind of harsher to just go in and wake them because sometimes it pulls them out of a really deep state of sleep. And then they’re groggy and pissed off for 30 minutes, which nobody wants, right. So if you naturally use the sunlight, then maybe the noise get shut off. And then you know, they kind of have that opportunity to pull themselves out of that cycle a little more gracefully. You know, what I try to explain to parents is look at, like when you get up in the morning, right? On a Saturday morning, for example, maybe you just naturally wake up at six o’clock and you go okay, I’m awake, I’m gonna get up and I’m like, wait a minute, no, it’s Saturday, I’m gonna get back to bed for a little bit because I can write, well, you’re wide awake at six o’clock, right? But then you go back to bed, and then your alarm goes off at like 730. And all of a sudden, you’re like, ah,

it pulls you out sometimes have a deep sleep, that’s why you’re more groggy actually getting up at 730 than you were at six o’clock, it depends on where you were in your stages and cycles of sleep. So sometimes, you know, just letting children naturally wake can just be more beneficial to their temperament. And to, you know, balancing their behavior, right? At 12 months, there’s just so much happening, your kids are tired, their fine motor skills are developing, they’re talking, there’s teeth coming in, you know, there’s just so much going on, you know, but trying to work on different activities to keep your kids stimulate it to get them to the right. Different nap schedule based on your situation, right. And then balancing things around, you know, for example, the 12 months sleep regression, which a lot of people talk about, okay. I often see when you incorporate the term sleep regression doesn’t matter if it’s 12 months, 15 months, four months, whatever that term is, it usually means that something shifted in your child’s sleep. Okay. And the reason it shifted, which ie caused the sleep regression is because we often as parents become kind of too excessive, versus just being accessible. What do I mean by that? Well, if your child at 12 months, stands up, yells, mom, and you come in at three in the morning and pick them up and then hold them for an hour and then rock them back to sleep and then put them back in the crib. Guess what, they’re waking up the next night going, mom, because they now expect you’re going to come in pick them up and rock them to sleep. Sometimes it happens by accident, right? Kids get sick. You know, there’s a storm, you’re traveling on vacation. Most often there’s something tied to a sleep regression that causes the sleep regression, right? It’s no fault of anyone that’s life, it happens, right? But a little bump can turn into a long messed up kind of sleep pattern. Right? So it’s best to like tackle it straightaway and recognize the checklist right? Is there something that they want? Like me to pick them up and rock them? Or is it something that they need, like hunger diaper or, you know, their tooth is hurting, they have a fever, you know, like there are things that like we as parents have to always obviously attend to our children. But you have to be careful that you don’t go over the fine line of what I kind of say to families that I do the private coaching with as be accessible but not excessive. It makes sure in making sure how we respond. Okay. And if you’re struggling with that, I mean, we’re here to help we offer privately coaching

We offer an amazing sleep Steps program, which is a self paced course and community. But it also includes weekly live zooms with me. So if you do the sleep Steps program, and then you have questions about, as you’re progressing through the program, you actually get to talk to me in that capacity, which is really cool. And it’s the only program that offers that as a part of the membership. And it’s 47 bucks a month. And you can cancel it at any time. So we’re really trying to do things different here with sleep training. And we recognize that parents have different needs different financial means, and are at different stages in their journey. So we’re here to support you whether you want private coaching with myself, or a member of the Slumber squad, or you want to work through our amazing sleep Steps program. Either way, we’re here to support you on every part of your journey. And we are balanced and we recognize everybody’s got different things going on. And we support you uniquely on your own journey. So give yourself grace, and understand that your baby might be different. And they might have different things going on, then. Some of the situations I’m talking about every kid is unique. So definitely trust your gut. trust your instinct and know that you can trust us if you want to get a bit of help in helping your child sleep through the night or get on that right and best nap schedule for them. Thanks so much for tuning in. I appreciate you and I hope you have a beautiful day. Sweet dreams.

One more thing before you go. Did you know that we offer the industry’s first affordable and effective self paced sleep coaching program that includes time with a pediatric sleep expert here on the tiny transitions team. It’s the industry’s first and only membership program like this, that you can cancel anytime. And the best part. It’s cheaper than a cup of coffee every single day. So say goodbye to the ebooks and courses that are not helping your child sleep better. And join sleep steps today. The most comprehensive sleep education you need to get everyone sleeping through the night. Learn more by visiting tiny transitions.com