A Sunnah Bedtime Routine for Babies and Toddlers

Bedtime with a baby or toddler can be the sweetest part of the day, or the longest. Some nights they drift off in your arms mid-surah. Other nights you’re on your third round of the Quls and they’re standing up in the cot, delighted to see you.

A routine won’t make every night easy, but it does help. Little ones settle better when they know what’s coming, and a sunnah bedtime gives you the words to fill those minutes with remembrance. This guide gives you a simple routine, explains how the adult sunnahs of sleep adapt for babies, and puts safe sleep first.

Why routine helps

Babies and toddlers have no sense of the clock. What they do recognise is a pattern. When the same steps happen in the same order every night, each step becomes a signal: bath means pyjamas, pyjamas mean the Quls, the Quls mean cuddle and sleep.

Step by step

1. Wind down. Dim the lights, switch off the TV, lower your voice. For toddlers, give a five-minute warning: “Last story, then it’s bedtime.”
2. A wudu-style wash. The Prophet ﷺ taught making wudu before sleeping (Sahih al-Bukhari 247). A baby can’t make wudu, but a warm wash of face, hands and feet, saying “Bismillah”, carries the spirit of it. Toddlers love copying the steps.
3. Pyjamas and a clean nappy. Start on the right side: right arm in first, right leg first. The Prophet ﷺ liked to begin with the right in his affairs (Sahih al-Bukhari 168).
4. The Quls. Cup your hands, blow lightly into them, recite Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq and An-Nas, and gently pass your hands over your baby, three times.
5. A short dua. The sleep dua, said softly, and the protection dua if you’d like.
6. A cuddle and a feed if your baby still has one, then down in the cot, on their back.
7. Same words every night. “Assalamu alaykum, my love. Allah is looking after you. See you in the morning.”

Evidence · Hadith

Every night when the Prophet ﷺ went to bed, he cupped his hands, blew into them and recited Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq and An-Nas. Then he wiped his hands over as much of his body as he could, starting with his head, face and the front of his body. He did this three times. Narrated by ʿAishah (RA).

The hadith describes what the Prophet ﷺ did for himself. Reciting over a child and passing your hands over them is a common extension of it.

The duas

Before sleep:

Evidence · Hadith

بِاسْمِكَ اللَّهُمَّ أَمُوتُ وَأَحْيَا

“In Your name, O Allah, I die and I live.” Narrated by Hudhayfah (RA).

Bismika Allahumma amutu wa ahya.

Protection (the Prophet ﷺ said this over his grandsons al-Hasan and al-Husayn):

Evidence · Hadith

أُعِيذُكُمَا بِكَلِمَاتِ اللَّهِ التَّامَّةِ مِنْ كُلِّ شَيْطَانٍ وَهَامَّةٍ وَمِنْ كُلِّ عَيْنٍ لاَمَّةٍ

“I seek protection for you both in the perfect words of Allah, from every devil and every harmful creature, and from every evil eye.”

The wording is for two children. Many parents adapt it for one, though that adapted form isn’t in the text; ask a scholar you trust if you want to adapt it.

On waking, the morning bookend: Alhamdu lillahil-ladhi ahyana ba’da ma amatana wa ilayhin-nushur (“All praise is for Allah, who gave us life after causing us to die, and to Him is the return”, Sahih al-Bukhari 6312).

More duas, for when your child is old enough to say them, are in duas for kids: the essential list.

Sunnah of sleep, adapted for babies

The Prophet ﷺ taught adults a few simple sleep habits. Here is how each one adapts for the youngest children.

Evidence · Hadith

The Prophet ﷺ said: “When any one of you goes to bed, let him dust off his bed with the inside of his waist-wrapper, for he does not know what has come onto it after him…” Narrated by Abu Hurayrah (RA).

Checking the bed before sleep is a lovely sunnah to pass on. For a baby, it fits neatly with safe-sleep advice: nothing in the cot that shouldn’t be there.

Safe sleep

This is where health guidance, not tradition, sets the rules. The NHS advises, among other things:

• Always put your baby on their back to sleep, with their feet at the foot of the cot or Moses basket.
• Use a separate cot or Moses basket in the same room as you for every sleep for at least the first six months.
• Keep the cot clear: a firm, flat mattress, and no pillows, duvets, bumpers, loose blankets, soft toys, pods or nests.
• Never sleep with your baby on a sofa or armchair.
• Don’t let your baby get too hot. Use lightweight bedding or a baby sleeping bag.
• Don’t smoke around your baby.

The NHS page also explains when bed-sharing is especially risky and how to make it safer if you do share a bed. In the US, the American Academy of Pediatrics gives similar advice. Talk to your midwife, health visitor or paediatrician about your own baby, especially if they were premature or have a health condition.

On Qur’an recordings and devices near the cot, see reciting Qur’an to your baby.

When nights are hard

Some babies sleep through early. Many don’t. Teething, growth spurts, illness and separation anxiety can turn a good sleeper into a night owl overnight.

• Take turns where you can. The Prophet ﷺ helped at home: ʿAishah (RA) said he “would keep busy serving his family” (Sahih al-Bukhari 676). A father doing the night shift, the early morning or the bath-and-bed routine is following that example.
• Lower the bar. On hard nights, the routine can shrink to the Quls and a cuddle. That’s enough.
• Use the quiet minutes. Feeding in the dark at 3am is a time many parents find for dhikr or quiet dua for their child.
• Ask for help. If exhaustion is making you feel low, hopeless or unsafe, talk to your GP, health visitor or midwife. Tiredness is real, and so is postnatal depression. You don’t have to push through alone.

Context notes

• In multigenerational homes, grandparents may have their own bedtime ways: swaddling tightly, a pillow “to shape the head”, a baby in the big bed. Listen kindly, and gently share the current safe-sleep advice; many grandparents simply weren’t told it when they were raising children.
• In hot climates or overheated flats, watch for overheating. Take off layers if your baby feels hot or sweaty.
• At high latitudes, where Maghrib and Isha come very late in summer, set your child’s bedtime by the clock, not the prayer times. You can pray after they sleep.

For older children, bedtime duas and a calm sunnah routine builds on this, and sunnah habits for babies shows how bedtime fits into the whole day.