Four is a wonderful, exhausting age at bedtime. Your child has a lot of language, a lot of opinions and an apparently endless supply of last requests: one more drink, one more cuddle, one more question about whether sharks sleep. A good routine won’t make every night perfect, but it takes most of the negotiating out of the evening.
How much sleep does a 4-year-old need?
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged 3 to 5 sleep 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours, including naps, and the CDC uses the same range. The World Health Organization’s guidelines for children aged 3 to 4 also say 10 to 13 hours of good-quality sleep, with regular sleep and wake-up times. Many four-year-olds have dropped their nap, so most of that has to happen at night.
In practice: if your child wakes at 7 am without a nap, a lights-out time between about 7 and 8 pm usually fits. Count back from your wake-up time rather than copying someone else’s schedule.
Why a routine matters (it’s not just about sleep)
A 2018 review by sleep researchers Jodi Mindell and Ariel Williamson in Sleep Medicine Reviews looked at the evidence on bedtime routines in young children. It concluded that a consistent routine supports not only healthy sleep but can contribute to positive developmental outcomes beyond sleep, and that promoting a bedtime routine is a feasible, low-cost thing families can do. Reading and singing are among the routine components the review discusses, with links to language and literacy, emotional regulation and the parent–child bond.
The NHS gives the same practical advice: a calm, predictable routine at around the same time each night.
A simple 30-minute routine
Adapt the times; keep the order.
- Screens off. The AAP recommends avoiding screens for an hour before bed, and the NHS says no tablets, phones or laptops in the 30 to 60 minutes before. Set the switch-off well before the routine starts.
- Bath or wash (10 minutes). Warm water, low light, no big games.
- Pyjamas and teeth (5 minutes). A visual checklist on the bathroom door helps a four-year-old do it themselves, which they love.
- Choose for tomorrow (2 minutes). Picking clothes for the morning gives your child a decision to make that isn’t about bedtime itself.
- Story (10 to 15 minutes). Read together, or listen to an audio story together in the dim light. This is the bit to protect.
- Talk, cuddle, lights down (3 minutes). The same goodnight words every night.
Handling the stalling
Build the requests into the routine
If it’s always a drink and the toilet, make “drink and toilet” step four. Requests that are already on the list stop being negotiations.
The “bedtime pass”
Some families give their child one ticket a night that can be swapped for one extra thing: a drink, a hug, a question. When it’s used, it’s used. It turns a power struggle into a game with clear rules.
Two choices, not open questions
“Do you want the blue or the dinosaur pyjamas?” works; “Are you ready for bed?” never does.
Keep the same routine at weekends
France’s Institut National du Sommeil et de la Vigilance advises using the same bedtime ritual during holidays, weekends and weekdays, and keeping regular times. Consistency is the routine’s superpower.
Choosing a bedtime story for a 4-year-old
At four, the best bedtime stories usually:
- last 5 to 15 minutes, so they end before attention does;
- have a simple plot with a clear problem and a kind resolution;
- include repetition, which four-year-olds love and which is soothing;
- slow down towards the end, with quieter scenes and a calm last line;
- avoid anything genuinely frightening right before sleep.
Listening to the same story many nights running is not a problem. For many children, it is the point. Our page on bedtime stories for 4 and 5 year olds goes into what works at this age, from the rule of three to keeping fears small.
Where audio stories fit
Reading aloud together is wonderful, and audio stories don’t replace it. The AAP’s Q&A on audiobooks notes that audio narration is not a perfect substitute for a parent reading with a child. But audio can be a great addition: on nights when you have lost your voice, when a sibling also needs you, or as the last story after the book, with the light off. The World Health Organization encourages reading and storytelling with a caregiver for young children, and listening together counts as storytelling too.
This is what Keoma was made for. You choose a hero, a world, a calm or bedtime mood and a little lesson; Keoma writes an original story for your child’s age and produces it like a radio play, with a narrator, character voices, soft music and sound effects. The player has a sleep timer that fades the story out at the end of the story, a chapter, or after 5 to 30 minutes, and a mode that darkens the screen while the story plays, so the phone is just a speaker on the shelf. Each script gets an AI safety review for your child’s age before it is recorded, and you can listen to it first.
Hear a sample story (no account needed), or see how Keoma compares with other bedtime story apps.
When bedtime keeps going wrong
If your child regularly takes more than half an hour to fall asleep, wakes often, snores loudly, or seems tired during the day despite enough time in bed, talk to your paediatrician or GP. And if the trouble is fear rather than stalling, our guide to fear of the dark is a better place to start.