Baby sleep schedule at 23 months: nap, bedtime and night terrors

Lulla Team·Published Sep 5, 2026·Updated Sep 6, 2026

At 23 months your toddler needs 11 to 14 hours of sleep a day: 10 to 12 hours at night and one nap, with wake windows of 5 to 6 hours. The nap has quietly shortened again — around an hour and a half is typical now — and bedtime has moved a little later to match.

A month short of two, the day is about as stable as toddler sleep gets. The useful work at 23 months is not restructuring anything but holding what already works, and knowing what to do on the nights that go wrong. Most of those nights have ordinary explanations.

See the full wake-window table, from newborn to 2 years→How many naps by age — the full table→When your newborn won't sleep: what to check, in order→

Night terrors sometimes appear in the second year and are often mistaken for nightmares. A terror happens in the first few hours of the night, during deep sleep: your child may sit up, scream, sweat and look straight through you without waking, and will remember nothing in the morning. A nightmare happens later in the night, wakes your child properly, and leaves them wanting comfort.

The response is different for each. With a night terror the advice is to stay nearby, keep your child safe and not try to wake them, because intervening usually prolongs it. With a nightmare you go in, comfort, and stay until they settle. Overtiredness makes terrors more likely, so protecting the nap and using an earlier bedtime often reduces them. Frequent or violent episodes deserve a conversation with your pediatrician.

A sample day

Here is one way a 23-month day can run: a nap of roughly an hour and a half after lunch, with wake windows of 5 to 6 hours either side. Treat it as a starting point rather than a rule, and let your toddler's wake-up time set everything that follows.

A sample day to give you a rough idea — every baby is different. Adjust the times to your child's sleep cues, and talk to your pediatrician about anything that worries you.

Tips for this age

• If the nap regularly ends late in the afternoon, cap it — at 23 months the nap has to leave a full 5 to 6 hour window before bedtime.
• Keep the same bedtime routine on weekends; a Saturday that runs an hour late is usually paid for on Sunday night.
• During a night terror, keep your child safe and wait it out rather than waking them, and talk about it in the morning only if they raise it.
• If terrors happen at a consistent time, logging them in Lulla makes the pattern visible, which is the first thing anyone will ask you about.
• Repeated night terrors, unusual movements during sleep, or breathing pauses are all worth raising with your pediatrician.

Common questions

Keep reading

• Baby tiredness signs: how to read them before the crying starts
• How to build the perfect sleep routine for your baby
• How much do newborns sleep? What's normal by age and when it's too much