Recognising your baby’s tired signs is one of the key ways to help your baby settle to sleep more easily.
Babies can become overtired quite quickly so it is important to watch them for the telltale signs of tiredness before they become irritable and overstimulated. It is not easy to settle a cranky baby.
Some of the baby and toddler tired signs are quite obvious—such as yawning or thumbsucking—but others are not as easy to recognise. It is important to watch your own child to see which of the following tired signs they exhibit.
Recognising your baby’s tired signs can also prevent you from trying to settle a baby who isn’t ready for a nap. No one wants to go to sleep when they’re not tired!
Consider this situation—your baby usually goes down for a nap about 9am but has lately started fighting sleep at this time. Maybe they are ready for a later nap or moving towards having just one nap a day? By watching your baby for tired signs (rather than watching the clock) this transition will be a smoother one.
What are the common baby tired signs
Tired signs—babies
A newborn baby cannot stay awake for very long before they become over tired. You should start to watch for these tired signs within an hour of your baby being awake, it will help you survive your baby’s first few weeks.
As a baby grows they are able to stay awake for longer periods of time.
In very general terms, if your baby is 3-6 months old you should start watching for tired signs after about 1hour 30mins (although at this age they might have at least one longer stretch of awake time each day—about 3 hours—without becoming overtired).
A baby aged 6-12 months can perhaps go for 2 or 3 hours before exhibiting these tired signs.
Early signs that your baby is starting to get tired:
- Looking glazed, losing their sparkle
- Frowning
- Not maintaining eye contact with you and looking away for brief moments
- Hiccups
- Red eye brows
Late tired signs when your baby is starting to become overtired:
- Yawning
- Jerky movements and becoming uncoordinated (in an older baby)
- Fist clenching
- Fussing
- Not wanting to be put down
- Becoming revved up and over excited
- Grizzling and crying
Tired signs—toddlers
An overtired toddler is not a fun person to be around! But at least by this age you probably are quite good at recognising their tired signs. Up until about 14-18 months many children will still need a morning and afternoon nap to avoid becoming overtired but many will drop to one nap a day around this time.
It is good to keep an eye on your toddler’s specific tired signs so the transition from two naps to one (and, in time, none) will be smooth.
- Yawning
- Asking for dummy or other sleep aid
- Increased clumsiness
- Thumb sucking
- Eye rubbing
- Lying on the floor (to play or rest)
- Cuddliness
- Increase in frustration
- Extra silly
- Extra giggly
- Extra clingy
- Bored
- Whingy
- Fussy with food
If you are experiencing sleep issues, or have had success with baby sleep and want to share what you’ve learned, chat about baby sleep and settling issues with other mums and dads in the Bub Hub Forum Sleep and Settling section 24/7.
Adrienne 
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