A healthy child’s breathing rate depends on age, ranging from as fast as 60 breaths per minute in a newborn to 12–16 breaths per minute in a teenager. Younger children naturally breathe faster because their lungs are smaller and their metabolisms are higher. Knowing the normal range for your child’s age helps you spot when something might be off.
Normal Breathing Rates by Age
Pediatric life support standards used across U.S. emergency and clinical settings define these ranges:
- Infant (birth to 1 year): 30 to 60 breaths per minute
- Toddler (1 to 3 years): 24 to 40 breaths per minute
- Preschooler (3 to 6 years): 22 to 34 breaths per minute
- School-age child (6 to 12 years): 18 to 30 breaths per minute
- Adolescent (12 to 18 years): 12 to 16 breaths per minute
The biggest drop happens during the first year of life. A newborn’s sleeping respiratory rate averages around 41 breaths per minute at birth and falls to roughly 24 breaths per minute by age one. After that, the decline is more gradual through childhood and into the teen years, when breathing rates settle into the adult range.
Awake vs. Sleeping Rates
Children breathe noticeably faster when they’re awake than when they’re asleep, and the gap is widest in the youngest kids. At birth, the median awake breathing rate is about 59 breaths per minute, while the median sleeping rate is closer to 41. By age three, those numbers converge to roughly 25 awake and 22 asleep.
This matters because a breathing rate taken while your child is crying, moving around, or just fed will read higher than one taken during calm sleep. For the most reliable count, measure when your child is relaxed or sleeping. Research suggests that sleeping respiratory rate in young children may actually be a more sensitive indicator of illness than awake measurements, since it removes the variability caused by activity and emotions.
How to Count Your Child’s Breathing Rate
You don’t need any special equipment. Uncover your child’s chest so you can see it clearly. Watch the chest or belly rise and fall, and count each complete rise-and-fall cycle as one breath. Time it for a full 60 seconds using a clock or phone timer. Shorter counts (like 15 seconds multiplied by four) can miss irregular patterns, especially in infants.
In babies, you’ll often see the belly move more than the chest. This is normal. Young children are “belly breathers” because their diaphragm does most of the work. The movement should look easy and rhythmic. If the chest or belly appears to rise and fall without visible effort, that’s a good sign.
Periodic Breathing in Newborns
If your newborn pauses breathing for a few seconds and then takes several quick breaths before settling back into a steady rhythm, that’s likely periodic breathing. It’s a normal pattern where short pauses of 5 to 10 seconds alternate with bursts of faster breathing, and it can repeat three or more times in a row. Periodic breathing is most common between 2 and 4 weeks of age and typically resolves by 6 months. It tends to happen during sleep.
Periodic breathing is different from apnea. Apnea means a baby stops breathing for 20 seconds or longer, or has a shorter pause accompanied by a slowed heart rate or drop in oxygen. If your baby stops breathing for longer than 10 seconds, their skin or lips turn blue, gray, purple, or white, or you can’t wake them, that’s an emergency.
Why Breathing Rates Rise During Illness
Fever alone can push a child’s breathing rate up significantly. For children over 12 months, expect an increase of roughly 5 to 7 extra breaths per minute for every degree Celsius (about 1.8°F) of fever. In babies under 12 months, the effect is even more pronounced: 7 to 11 additional breaths per minute per degree Celsius.
This means a toddler with a fever of 39°C (102.2°F), about 2 degrees above normal, could be breathing 10 to 14 breaths per minute faster than usual and still be within an expected range for their illness. Understanding this helps you avoid unnecessary panic when your sick child is breathing quickly but otherwise looks comfortable. The more useful question during a fever isn’t just “how fast?” but “how hard does breathing look?”
Signs of Breathing Difficulty Beyond the Rate
A high breathing rate on its own doesn’t always signal danger, especially during fever, crying, or physical activity. What matters more is how your child looks while breathing. Several visible signs indicate that a child is working harder than normal to get air:
- Retractions: The skin pulls inward below the neck, under the breastbone, or between the ribs with each breath. This means the body is recruiting extra muscles to draw in air.
- Nasal flaring: The nostrils visibly widen with each inhale, a sign of increased effort.
- Grunting: A short, low sound with each exhale. The body does this to keep the lungs inflated and maintain oxygen exchange.
- Color changes: Bluish or grayish tinting around the mouth, inside the lips, or at the fingernails suggests the body isn’t getting enough oxygen.
Any of these signs, particularly retractions or color changes, warrants prompt medical attention regardless of what the breathing rate number is. A child breathing 30 times per minute with visible retractions is more concerning than one breathing 40 times per minute while running around and looking fine. Context and effort matter as much as the count itself.