13-Month-Old Sleep Schedule: Naps & Wake Windows
Grzegorz Oksiuta • Jul 18, 2026
In this article:
- Why Isn't There Just One 13-Month-Old Sleep Schedule?
- Why Does Sleep Get Unpredictable Around 13 Months?
- How Much Sleep Does a 13-Month-Old Need?
- What Do the Three 13-Month Schedules Look Like?
- My Toddler Suddenly Refused a Nap. Are They Ready for One Nap?
- How Do You Know Which Schedule Actually Fits Your Toddler?
- What This Means for You Tonight
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Sources
- Stop Guessing Which Nap Schedule Fits Your Toddler
A 13-month-old sleep schedule depends on where your toddler sits in the two-to-one nap transition: still on two naps, actively transitioning, or settled on one. Toddlers this age need 11-14 hours of sleep across 24 hours, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.¹ Most 13-month-olds are not ready to fully drop the afternoon nap yet.
Why Isn't There Just One 13-Month-Old Sleep Schedule?
Actually, there are three, and your toddler's age isn't what decides which one fits.
Thirteen months sits inside the two-to-one nap transition window, which runs from 13 to 18 months, and most toddlers haven't finished it. Some are still solidly on two naps. Others swing between one and two from day to day. A few have already landed on one. Most parents arrive at this page mid-nap-strike, having watched a reliable afternoon nap fall apart over three or four days, wondering whether that means it's time to drop to one. The answer to that is below, in the section on false transitions, and it's probably not the one you're bracing for.
For the wider arc of how nap counts change from newborn to toddler, our baby sleep by age guide maps the whole thing, and the baby sleep hub collects everything else by topic.
Why Does Sleep Get Unpredictable Around 13 Months?
Walking, teething, and separation anxiety: the three nap-strike triggers
Three things collide around 13 months, and they all produce the same symptom: a sudden, spotty refusal of the afternoon nap. Walking goes from a wobbly first attempt around 12 months to a steadier gait by 13. Separation anxiety intensifies between 10 and 18 months and peaks around 15. And the first molars start pushing through.
Walking practice. Newly walking infants show measurably more fragmented overnight sleep and lower sleep efficiency around the time they consolidate the skill.² ³ Nobody has proven what happens inside the sleep itself. The timing link between a new motor skill and disrupted nights, though, is well documented.
Separation anxiety. The AAP confirms that separation anxiety disrupts sleep and causes night waking, that it's developmentally normal, and that it fades by around your child's second birthday.⁴ Respond with consistent reassurance, not a schedule overhaul. If this feels familiar, it's the same mechanism that drove the 8-month sleep regression, arriving again with a bigger vocabulary.
Teething. First molars may be starting to come through around this age, and teething gets blamed for nap strikes constantly. The evidence is mixed. A 2025 longitudinal study that tracked infants with auto-videosomnography through teething episodes found "no significant differences in sleep metrics between teething and nonteething nights," even though more than half the parents in the study reported disturbance on teething days.⁵ Michal Kahn and colleagues, writing in The Journal of Pediatrics, put it plainly: parents' subjective reports "were not corroborated by the objective data."⁵ Teething discomfort can still cost your toddler a nap here and there. Treat it as one possible factor, not a confirmed cause.
Any one of these, or all three at once during a bad week, produces a nap strike that looks exactly like readiness for one nap.
It usually isn't.
The "12-14 month sleep regression," explained
Sleep specialists group this stretch under the "12-14 month sleep regression": the weeks when a reliable two-nap schedule gets choppy because walking, cognition, and separation anxiety are all advancing at once. Sleep Foundation lists the same cluster of causes, physical growth and activity, separation anxiety, teething, and schedule changes, and puts the disruption at "not longer than a few weeks."⁶ A study tracking around 170 children's napping patterns found that the two-nap rhythm was already well established by 9 to 12 months of age.⁷ That's why a refusal at 13 months lands so hard. The schedule had been working for a third of your child's life, then it stopped, and nothing you did caused it.
The same disruption pattern shows up much earlier too, in the 4-month sleep regression, if you want to compare.
How Much Sleep Does a 13-Month-Old Need?
Total sleep, naps, and wake windows at a glance
Total daily sleep holds steady across all three scenarios below, 11-14 hours per 24 hours, according to the AASM, CDC, and WHO.¹ ⁸ ⁹ What changes is how that sleep gets split.
| Scenario | Total daily sleep | Naps | Nap duration | Wake windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Still on two naps | 11-14 hours | 2 | AM: 45-60 min (capped); PM: 1-1.5 hours | 3.5-5 hours |
| Actively transitioning | 11-14 hours | 1-2 (varies day to day) | Varies day to day | 3.5-5 hours |
| On one nap | 11-14 hours | 1 | 1-2.5 hours | 4-5 hours |
Three and a half to five hours awake is a long stretch. Our wake windows by age chart shows the full progression, and 9-month wake windows is the nearest earlier reference point if you're comparing against a younger sibling. If you're not sure the total is landing where it should, is my baby sleeping enough walks through how to count it.
Why the morning nap gets capped, not dropped
For toddlers still on two naps, this is the single most useful thing on the page: cap the morning nap at 45-60 minutes. An uncapped morning nap eats the sleep pressure your toddler needs to fall asleep for the afternoon nap, and to stay asleep through it.
| Morning nap capped at 45-60 min | Morning nap left uncapped | |
|---|---|---|
| Afternoon nap | Protected, sleep pressure builds normally | Often refused or very short |
| Bedtime | Falls in the normal 6:30-8:00pm window | Frequently pushed late, overtired |
| Night sleep | Typically consolidated | More prone to night waking |
What Do the Three 13-Month Schedules Look Like?
Match your toddler to whichever of these looks closest to the week they actually had, not the one you wish applied.
One thing worth knowing before you read them: mealtimes anchor all three now, not milk feeds and not wake windows. Three meals plus one or two snacks structure the day, and holding those at consistent clock times does more to stabilize the rest of the schedule than any single nap adjustment. Bedtime routine runs 20-30 minutes in all three cases: wind-down, hygiene, pajamas, milk if you're still offering it, a story, into the crib.
Still on two naps
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 6:00-7:00am | Wake, breakfast shortly after |
| 9:00-9:30am | Morning nap starts (capped at 45-60 min) |
| 12:00-12:30pm | Lunch |
| 1:00-2:00pm | Afternoon nap (1-1.5 hours) |
| 5:00-5:30pm | Dinner |
| 6:30-7:30pm | Bedtime routine and sleep |
Actively transitioning (unstable, follow the child)
Some days run the two-nap structure above. Others run the one-nap structure below. Don't commit rigidly to either while this phase is underway. Take a one-nap day when your toddler shows genuine readiness signs (the table further down covers those), and go back to two naps on the days tiredness arrives early. This phase takes weeks to months to resolve. The instability is the phase, not a sign anything is wrong.
On one nap
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 6:00-7:00am | Wake, breakfast shortly after |
| 9:30-10:00am | Mid-morning snack |
| 11:30am-12:30pm | Lunch, then nap start |
| Nap | 1-2.5 hours (roughly 1.5-2 hours as a working target) |
| On wake | Snack |
| 5:00-5:30pm | Dinner |
| 6:30-7:30pm | Bedtime routine and sleep (an earlier bedtime compensates for the dropped nap) |
To see how these blocks compare with every other age, use our baby nap schedule by age reference. The 3-month schedule and the 6-month schedule show how far the day has already travelled.
My Toddler Suddenly Refused a Nap. Are They Ready for One Nap?
The "false transition": why a nap strike usually isn't readiness
A sudden refusal of the afternoon nap, on some days but not others, is the most common 13-month nap complaint there is. It's almost always walking practice, teething, or separation anxiety. Thirteen months is almost universally too early to complete the two-to-one transition, and pushing a toddler onto one nap this early produces a severe overtired cycle and extensive night waking a few weeks later.
So the fix isn't dropping the nap. It's capping the morning nap at 45-60 minutes to protect the sleep pressure that powers the afternoon one. Don't rebuild the whole day around three skipped naps. An AASM practice-parameter review of infant and toddler sleep problems put the principle plainly: "mild and transient symptoms do not necessarily constitute a sleep disorder."¹⁰ The good news is that a true nap strike passes quickly, and your toddler sleeps well otherwise. Genuine readiness looks different, and the signs section below spells out how to tell them apart. Our guide to when to drop a nap covers the same decision at every other age.
Early waking at 4-5am: is it hunger or something else?
Waking at 4-5am at this age is frequently "motor leap" practice: the brain rehearsing standing and walking during a light sleep cycle. Not hunger. Not a signal to move bedtime earlier. Toddlers skew strongly toward a morning-type chronotype, with earlier melatonin onset and earlier natural wake times, measured directly in 2- to 3-year-olds but present as a circadian pattern well before that.¹¹ Handle it with full room darkness and by not rushing in: give your toddler a few minutes to resettle, and keep your response low-key and boring if they don't.
Unfortunately, a later bedtime does not fix toddler early waking. Early waking is circadian in origin, driven by melatonin suppression at dawn, so pushing bedtime back gets you an overtired toddler who wakes even earlier.
Bedtime resistance and stalling
Emerging autonomy at this age means more pushback at every transition, not just at naps. A consistent, predictable pre-sleep sequence, wind-down cue, hygiene, pajamas, story, into the crib, shortens settling time and reduces resistance whichever nap scenario your toddler is currently in.
How Do You Know Which Schedule Actually Fits Your Toddler?
Genuine readiness looks like this: a consistent refusal of one nap on most days rather than the occasional one, a morning nap that's shrunk to 20-30 minutes for several days running, or an afternoon nap that keeps pushing bedtime unworkably late.
Too early looks like this: clear tiredness and fussiness before a 4-5 hour wake window, naps that still settle quickly and produce real sleep, and a toddler who falls apart on the days a nap gets skipped.
| Sign | Ready to move toward one nap | Too early, stay on two (capped) |
|---|---|---|
| Nap refusal pattern | Consistent, most days | Occasional, some days but not others |
| Morning nap | Very short (20-30 min) for several days running | Still settling quickly, producing adequate sleep |
| Mood on skipped-nap days | Copes reasonably well | Frequently overtired, fussy |
| Bedtime | Two-nap days push bedtime unworkably late | Bedtime falls in the normal 6:30-8:00pm window |
Overtiredness at this age shows up as hyperactivity before sleep, difficulty settling, early waking, and more bedtime resistance. Our guide to overtired baby signs covers what that looks like from the doorway. Undertiredness looks different: a long time to fall asleep, then a short nap after which your toddler still seems rested.
Contact your pediatrician if total sleep consistently falls under 11 hours over two or more weeks, if your toddler seems chronically exhausted despite a consistent routine, if night waking happens more than 3-4 times a night for more than 2-3 weeks without a clear cause, or if you notice snoring, labored breathing, or pauses in breathing during sleep.¹² Breathing symptoms are the ones not to sit on. They're treatable, and the sleep debt compounds while you wait.
What This Means for You Tonight
If your toddler skipped a nap today, don't restructure anything yet. Cap tomorrow's morning nap at 45-60 minutes and see whether the afternoon nap comes back.
If mornings are starting at 4-5am, check the room for light leaks first, then give it a few minutes before you go in. It's more likely motor-leap practice than hunger.
If nap refusal has held most days for more than a week and bedtime keeps sliding late, that's a real readiness signal. Go back to the signs table and trial the one-nap day.
Keep mealtimes at consistent clock times through all of it. During an unstable nap week, that's the most stabilizing lever you have.
This phase is genuinely hard to read from the inside, and it resolves on its own timeline rather than yours. Cap the morning nap, hold the mealtimes, and give it two weeks before you conclude anything.
The tell is usually bedtime, not the naps. One parent on r/sleeptrain, mid-transition with a 13.5-month-old on a capped two-nap day, put it simply: "She just doesn't seem tired enough and it's pushing later" — bedtime drifting from 7:30 toward 8:00 (r/sleeptrain, May 2026).
More by age: 12-month sleep schedule · 14-month sleep schedule · every age in one place
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there one 13 month old sleep schedule that works for every toddler?
No. There are three, and which one fits depends on where your toddler sits in the two-to-one nap transition rather than on their age in months. A two-nap day, an unstable transitioning day, and a one-nap day all deliver the same 11-14 hours of total sleep. They just split it differently. Pick the pattern that matches the week your toddler actually had, and expect it to change over the next few months.
My 13-month-old suddenly refuses the afternoon nap. Does that mean they're ready for one nap?
Usually not. Walking practice, teething, or separation anxiety cause a temporary nap strike that mimics readiness. Occasional refusal, some days but not others, is normal at this age. Cap the morning nap at 45-60 minutes and wait it out rather than restructuring the day. Consistent refusal over a week or more, paired with a morning nap that's gotten very short and a bedtime that keeps getting pushed late, is a stronger signal of genuine readiness.
What time should a 13-month-old go to bed?
Between 6:30 and 8:00pm for most families, with 6:30-7:30pm typical. If bedtime keeps drifting later, an earlier bedtime is the fix for overtiredness and early waking at this age, not a later one. Pushing bedtime back to buy a later wake-up backfires: you get a more overtired toddler who still wakes early.
Why is my 13-month-old waking up at 4 or 5am?
Frequently "motor leap" waking, the brain practicing new gross motor skills like standing and walking during a light sleep cycle, rather than hunger. The fix is full room darkness and no immediate intervention: give your toddler a few minutes to resettle, and keep your response low-key if they don't. Resist the instinct to push bedtime later to compensate. Early waking at this age is largely circadian, and a later bedtime makes it worse.
How long are wake windows at 13 months?
3.5-5 hours on a two-nap or transitioning schedule, and 4-5 hours on a one-nap schedule. Those ranges are wide on purpose. Wake windows alone don't tell you which schedule fits your toddler; the nap-refusal pattern and where bedtime is landing matter more than the exact hour count.
When do toddlers fully drop to one nap?
Typically between 13 and 18 months, averaging around 15 months. Thirteen months is almost always too early to complete the transition, even when your toddler is showing some of the signs. Cap the morning nap instead of dropping it, and revisit the readiness signs as the weeks pass.
Sources
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine (Paruthi S, Brooks LJ, D'Ambrosio C, et al.). "Recommended Amount of Sleep for Pediatric Populations: A Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine." Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2016;12(6):785-786. DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.5866. https://aasm.org/recharge-with-sleep-pediatric-sleep-recommendations-promoting-optimal-health/
- Horger MN, DeMasi A, Allia AM, Scher A, Berger SE. "Newly walking infants' night sleep impacts next day learning and problem solving." Advances in Child Development and Behavior. 2021;60:57-83. PMID: 33641800. DOI: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2020.08.002. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33641800/
- Berger SE, Moore CT. "A time series analysis of the relation between motor skill acquisition and sleep in infancy." Infant Behavior and Development. 2021;65:101654. PMID: 34688078. DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101654. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34688078/
- American Academy of Pediatrics. "Separation Anxiety and Sleeping." HealthyChildren.org. Updated August 25, 2022. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/sleep/Pages/separation-anxiety-and-sleeping.aspx
- Kahn M, Lucchini M, Oster E, Thakur S, Waugh M, Barnett N. "Does Teething Disrupt Infant Sleep? A Longitudinal Auto-Videosomnography Study." The Journal of Pediatrics. 2025;279:114461. PMID: 39788183. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2025.114461. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39788183/
- Sleep Foundation (Eric Suni; medically reviewed by Ealena Callender, MD, MPH, FACOG). "12-Month Infant Sleep Regression." Updated July 15, 2025. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/baby-sleep/12-month-sleep-regression
- Weissbluth M. "Naps in children: 6 months-7 years." Sleep. 1995;18(2):82-87. PMID: 7792496. DOI: 10.1093/sleep/18.2.82. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7792496/
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Positive Parenting Tips: Toddlers (1-2 years)." https://www.cdc.gov/child-development/positive-parenting-tips/toddlers-1-2-years.html
- World Health Organization. "To Grow Up Healthy, Children Need to Sit Less and Play More." 2019. https://www.who.int/news/item/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-more
- Mindell JA, Kuhn B, Lewin DS, Meltzer LJ, Sadeh A. "Behavioral Treatment of Bedtime Problems and Night Wakings in Infants and Young Children." SLEEP. 2006;29(10):1263-1276. https://aasm.org/resources/practiceparameters/review_nightwakingschildren.pdf
- Simpkin CT, Jenni OG, Carskadon MA, Wright KP Jr, Akacem LD, Garlo KG, LeBourgeois MK. "Chronotype is associated with the timing of the circadian clock and sleep in toddlers." Journal of Sleep Research. 2014;23(4):397-405. PMID: 24628737. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12142. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24628737/
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine / Sleep Education (medically reviewed by Anne Marie Morse, DO, FAASM). "Sleep Disorders in Children." January 10, 2023. https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders-in-children/
Stop Guessing Which Nap Schedule Fits Your Toddler
Tracking whether today is a two-nap day or a one-nap day, and whether that nap strike was real or just a bad tooth week, is a lot to hold in your head during an unstable transition. Pelio logs naps and wake windows automatically and flags when a pattern change looks like genuine transition readiness rather than a temporary disruption.