When Does an 80/20 Schedule Start To Work?

When it comes to sleep training, there are times where you need 100% consistency and other times where you can use the 80/20 rule. It can be confusing to know when you can start incorporating the 80/20 rule, so I’m going to walk you through it!

If you’ve gone through sleep training with a consultant, through a course, or simply by following along with some online blogs that resonate with your parenting style, you’ll understand that your child’s sleep environment really matters and you don’t want to do anything to mess it up. But, life happens and sometimes things do come and mess up our groove and we need to roll with it.

So, when is the appropriate time to adopt an 80/20 schedule?

When mentioning the 80/20 rule, what I mean by that is: 80% of the time, your child is sleeping in their ideal sleep environment, at the right time, using their usual routines. 20% of the time, you are potentially skipping a nap, doing later bedtime, napping at a different time, potentially in another place, or even on-the-go. Having an 80/20 approach to sleep, heck - even to life, is a really healthy way to exist.

When you first start implementing any sort of sleep training or sleep program for your child, you are quite literally changing the entire way they fall asleep. You are most likely going from putting your child to sleep in some way (rocking to sleep, feeding to sleep, co-sleeping, etc.) to having your child fall asleep completely on their own. This takes some practice and patience.

I generally advise my clients to try to stick to their new sleep plan 100% for the first 2 weeks. This way their child’s internal body clock has time to adjust and reset to the new schedule. Plus, it’s common for naps in the first week to really suck. The main reason why this is, is because at nighttime, we are relying on the help of your child’s natural melatonin production to help them fall asleep. But during the day, you don’t have that same advantage. Napping them in their ideal sleep space is the best way for your child to learn how to extend their naps past 1 sleep cycle and onto the 1-hour nap minimum.

Once you’re through the first 2 weeks of sleep training and you’re starting to feel confident with your sleeper, then you can start implementing an 80/20 schedule for your child. This is when you can start doing a contact nap here and there, you can plan for an on-the-go nap, or you can do later bedtime if you’d like.

The thing with children is that they thrive on consistency and routine - even if they fight it. So if you don’t have any plans in the upcoming weeks, or you don’t have to travel with your kiddos anytime soon, I wouldn’t dive head-first into purposely doing an 80/20 schedule.

If you have started going off track with your schedules and routines to accommodate classes or playdates and you’ve noticed that your child’s sleep has gotten much worse, then I would consider going back to basics with 100& consistency for 3-5 days. This will regulate their sleep schedules again and they’ll go back to being consistent with their sleep.

With my own kids, I would say I practice a 95/5 schedule with them during the regular school year, but in the summertime we are definitely 80/20. But, I have to say - I love knowing that I have flexibility with my children’s nap schedules so that I don’t feel the need to be nap-trapped at home all day.

If you have questions about the 80/20 rule, post them below!