Recommended daily rhythms, age 0–6

Pediatric and early-childhood research converges on four to six daily-life buckets for the under-fives. The Asia-Pacific consensus on integrated 24-hour activity guidelines (Tan et al., Lancet Reg Health W Pac 2022) frames the day as sleep · physical activity · sedentary behaviour · diet — a 24-hour energy-balance lens that the WHO under-5 movement guidelines (2019) sit inside. The Early Head Start caregiving framework adds care routines (feeding, bathing, diapering, dressing, napping) as the predictable scaffolding that everything else hangs from.

We use six because parents plan Developmental activity (open-ended exploration, art, reading) and Bonding activity (stories, songs, co-regulation, attunement) differently — and the research outcomes diverge. Vocabulary growth tracks closely to learning-block exposure (Hart & Risley 1995; Hoff 2003); joint attention, attachment, and emotional regulation track to bonded, present-moment interaction (Tomasello 2008; Beebe & Lachmann 2002). Treating them as the same category collapses signal that parents intuitively distinguish.

AAP's 'Power of Play' (Yogman et al., Pediatrics 2018) splits play five ways — object, physical, pretend, outdoor, social — and our six categories absorb that texture: Body covers physical + outdoor; Developmental covers object + pretend; Bonding covers social. Meals, Sleep, and Care are separated out because they dominate the time budget of the under-three day and reward their own planning rituals.

If you only want to plan Bonding and Developmental, set it that way — the schedule won't nag about the rest. Six is the ceiling, not the floor; pick what matters to your family right now and add the others as your child grows.

Where the obvious things live: outside time sits inside Body (the outdoor slot type, which dominates the Body recommendation for under-5s and stays prominent through age 6 — WHO under-5 guidelines call for ≥180 minutes of varied movement daily; ages 5–17 add ≥60 minutes moderate-to-vigorous on top). Social activity sits inside Bonding (stories, music, songs, co-regulation) plus emergent in shared Developmental blocks (peer play, group exploration). Play is deliberately distributed, not collapsed: physical play lives in Body, object + pretend play in Developmental, social play in Bonding — that mirrors the AAP Power of Play split (Yogman 2018) rather than treating play as a monolith. Mindfulness and quiet self-regulation aren't a separate category at this age — they're learned inside Bonding (slow stories, co-regulated calm), Care (bath wind-down, massage as somatic regulation) and Sleep (predictable pre-sleep ritual). When dedicated mindfulness becomes appropriate (around 4–5y per Greater Good Berkeley + Mindful Schools research), it lives in the Bonding stream first, then graduates to its own practice.