How to transition back to a school sleep schedule
How has your summer been? Did you read my blog post on how to enjoy summer without sacrificing sleep? Did you have good intentions to stay relatively on-track with sleep? Did you, like us, end up with a wildly different sleep schedule (or no sleep schedule) for your kids?
With school starting in just over 2 weeks, and in some provinces just over 1 week, you might be feeling panicked about how you’re going to get your kids going to bed at an appropriate hour.
It’s OK! You still have time. The first week of school is often a slow start anyway, meaning if your kids are late for the first few days, or if they are a bit groggy from having to be woken up, they aren’t going to miss too much.
We’ve already started transitioning our girls to an earlier bedtime. We’ve been enjoying some quieter days at, or close, to home, making it an opportune time to start sliding bedtime back to normal.
At the end of last year, our evening schedule looked like this:
5:00 pm supper
6:30 pm start bedtime routine
7:15 pm girls in bed
During the summer, everything shifted about one hour later:
6:00 pm supper
7:30 pm start bedtime routine
8:15 pm girls in bed
And some nights this summer it even looked like this:
6:30 pm supper
8:00 pm start bedtime routine
8:45 pm girls in bed
Since then some of our routines have changed a bit, and their sleep needs have also. Our oldest daughter Lily now gets reading time in bed and doesn’t need as much sleep as our younger daughter Hannah. However, we’ve always done their bedtime routines together, and it has worked well for us. Instead of doing two separate bedtime routines, we allow Lily to stay awake a bit longer reading, and she might wake up a bit earlier in the morning.
Hannah still needs 11-12 hours of sleep every night. We have to be up by 7:00 am at the latest. Assuming it takes her 15 minutes to fall asleep, she should be in her bed no later than 7:45 pm.
We have started shifting everything earlier by 15 minutes. We will continue to move bedtime back by 15 minutes every 5 days or so until they are going to bed around 7:15 pm.
“Older children can often handle a bigger shift, so if you only have a week or a weekend before school starts, you could adjust bedtime (and meal times) by 20-30 minutes.”
Older children (preschool aged and up) can often handle a bigger shift, so if you only have a week or a weekend before school starts, you could adjust bedtime (and meal times) by 20-30 minutes, similar to how we adjust sleep schedules when the time changes in the fall and spring.
So how can you figure out what time your child should be going to bed and how do you make that happen? Start by figuring out the following:
How many hours of sleep does your child need in a 24-hour period?
What time do they have to be up in the morning for school?
How long does your bedtime routine take? I would suggest no more than 30 minutes for one child, and maybe an extra 15 minutes for more than one child.
If you’re not sure how much sleep your child needs, consider these recommendations:
Preschool (3-5 years) - 10-13 hours
School age (6-13 years) - 9-11 hours
Teenager (14-17 years) - 8-10 hours
Keep in mind that while sleep needs vary from person to person, the difference is unlikely to be vast for children of the same age.
“Having screen time too close to bedtime, anxiety and worries, or an overly busy schedule are some reasons children might have a difficult time falling asleep.”
If you have to wake your child in the morning, they might be going to bed too late. Or, bedtime might be appropriate, but your child is having difficulty falling asleep at night. This can be related to sleep environment, too much screen time or screen time too close to bedtime, anxiety and worries, a too-early school start time (this is a common problem for teenagers whose circadian rhythm is later than their parents’), shifting boundaries, an overly busy schedule and a number of other factors.
Depending on how many days you have before school starts, you can choose to adjust the schedule by 15 minutes every few nights, or do a bigger jump of 20 or 30 minutes every 1-3 nights.
You can also help reset their internal clock by exposing them to natural light first thing in the morning.
Don’t forget to adjust mealtimes along with bedtimes, as our regular daily habits also affect circadian rhythm.
A well-rounded bedtime routine for a school-aged child might look like this:
Make sure to turn off all devices at least 90-120 minutes before bedtime (and limit screen time to less than 2 hours per day for children over 5).
Take a warm shower or bath
Brush teeth
Visit the bathroom
Pajamas
Stories
Lights out
Final hugs
Getting back into the routines of fall brings a sense of predictability, and children thrive when they know what’s coming. A solid bedtime routine will go a long way to help children fall asleep easier, and sleep through the night until morning.