Our Toddler's daily routine

Codi (our son) loves routine. If you are looking to examine someone elses routine feel free to use ours, we have found that he runs like clockwork on it. He sleeps close to 12.5 hours at night and 2 hours during the day.

Note: Codi is a 17 month

old toddler boy.

7.30am wakes (sometimes wakes at 8am)
7.45am milk
8.15am breakfast
10.00am morning tea
11.30am lunch
12.30am sleep
2.30pm wakes
2.45pm orange juice
4pm afternoon tea
6pm dinner
6.40pm bath
7pm sleep

Do we deviate at all? Yes we do, but only based on if he wakes up earlier or later in the morning. For example... if he wakes up 30 mins later than normal (which he often does) then everything up to and including his daytime sleep time shifts 30 mins later. We are very reluctant to let him wake up earlier... we normally resettle him where ever possible.

We are very strict on not letting him sleep more than two hours during the day, as from experience this causes his night time sleep to shorten. So if he hasn’t woken up after two hours of sleep during the day, we open his door so the light can creep in, if he still doesn't wake up we softly stroke his back until he wakes. One thing we have found in these situations is that he is very appreciative if we have a nice cool bottle of orange juice when he wakes :)

We are very strict on the dinner, bath and sleep times. We never deviate from these.

Apart from the routine above which primarily revolves around eating and sleeping, we do the following activities...  play games, play on the swing, go to the park, go for a walk, swim, watch a little seseme street, go to a restaurant (you don’t have to eat in), visit friends, kindermusic, play group, play in the sandpit, read books, dance to music... etc. Their are hundreds of activities that we do and anyone can do.