It often surprises people when they find out that children all need a different amount of sleep. If your child has a sibling, they may need different sleep than their brother/sister at the same age!
Think about what happens when your child goes to their pediatrician to get their height and weight measured. Likely, your pediatrician then tells you that your child is in a certain percentile for their height and weight. This means that they are comparing your child’s height or weight to other children their age/sex. And just like your child’s height/weight, unless the amount of sleep they are getting is on the extreme end of the chart, we typically don’t worry!
Take a look at the chart. On the X-axis (the horizontal line, going left-to-right), look for your child’s age. Then look on the Y-axis (the vertical line, going top-to-bottom) look for the amount of sleep that your child averages based on their sleep diaries and sleep calculator. If you draw a straight line from both of those points, you will see what percentile your child’s total sleep duration lands on.
For example, if you have a 9-year old who is sleeping an average of 10 hours/night, they are in approximately the 50th percentile. This means that they are in the middle; compared to other 9-year olds, they don’t really sleep more or less than average. If they were in the 90th percentile, it would mean that they sleep much more than the average child their age, and if they were in the 10th percentile, it would mean that they sleep much less than the average child their age. If this is a little confusing, here is a short video that might explain things!
