Toddlers are waking up less and less at night, shows an ISQ study
Posted March 13, 2025 2:11 pm.
Last Updated March 13, 2025 2:14 pm.
Toddlers’ nights are becoming less fragmented, according to data from the Growing Up in Quebec study, which tracked the development of children at 5 and 17 months of age.
The aim of this vast longitudinal study is to gain a better understanding of the factors that can influence the development and well-being of children born in Quebec in 2020-2021. The results on toddlers’ sleep, unveiled on Thursday, confirm that as children get older, they wake up less at night. More specifically, 31 per cent of children aged one and a half never woke up at night in the month preceding the survey, compared with 13 per cent at the age of 5 months.
Parents can also expect to wake up less at night, since the proportion of children who woke up at least three times during the night fell from 35 per cent at 5 months to 18 per cent at 17 months.
The Institut de la statistique (ISQ) survey also shows that the proportion of children sleeping through the night is increasing. Nearly half of babies slept through the night at 5 months – that is, they slept at least six hours in a row – while at 17 months three quarters of children met this criterion.
In addition, the proportion of children sleeping the recommended number of hours per day for their age jumped from 75 per cent to 85 per cent between 5 and 17 months.
The data shows that at 17 months, children sleep an average of 12.8 hours a day. By the age of 5 months, they were sleeping 13.4 hours.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
