Bedtime Basics for the School Year
As your child’s schedule fills up with after school activities and homework, it’s a great time to reevaluate your children’s sleep needs. Adequate sleep makes our children more cheerful, less prone to temper tantrums, and better able to concentrate. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the following for a 24 hour period:
- A 5-year-old needs 10-13 hours of sleep.
- Between 6-12 years old, children need 9-12 hours of sleep.
- Teens need 8-10 hours of sleep.
As a certified sleep consultant, I recommend aiming for more sleep rather than less sleep. It’s amazing to see that offering more sleep often leads to children sleeping more. Many parents make the mistake of allowing children to stay up until they “feel tired”. However, our bodies are designed with an internal clock. Missing internal sleep cues can make it harder for children to go to sleep because the body produces a stress hormone in response to being tired. This hormone, cortisol, is responsible for our fight or flight response. With a cortisol buildup, children get a second wind, their heart rates increase, breathing rates increase, and this makes it very tough to tuck them in.
In addition to having a second wind and taking a long time to settle down at night, another side effect of being tired is waking up early, or waking multiple times during the night. Often parents worry that putting their child to bed earlier will lead to children waking up earlier, but actually the opposite happens. Children who go to bed at the time that their bodies’ biological clock tells them to go to sleep will sleep longer and more solidly. This provides them with a great foundation to start their days.
What does this mean for bedtimes? Children who need to be on the bus or at school from 7:30-8:00am, need to go to bed at 7:30-8:00pm in order to get their 11-12 hours of sleep. Some kindergarteners may need even more sleep than that. Giving children this solid sleep foundation is vitally important for them to acquire new skills and develop.
Before they worry about never being able to do anything in the evenings ever again, I like to remind parents about living 80/20. By this I mean, 80 percent of the time we follow our routines, but we allow ourselves to stray 20 percent of the time. So when Friday Night Game Night is at your house, enjoy the evening guilt free. If your children go to bed a little later on this night, it’s ok. You haven’t ruined them for life, they can just get right back on track the next night. If you have a solid bedtime routine, returning to your schedule won’t be a struggle. You will be able to have fun evenings every now and then, and your kids will have the energy and focus to get that triple-word score on the Scrabble board.
 | About the Author: Cari Bak is a certified sleep consultant. As a mom to 3 very busy daughters, Cari figured out that sleep was crucial to running the household. Knowing how much better life can be when well rested, sleep became a fascination. With 250+ hours of course work and certification through Family Sleep Institute, Cari opened her own business, Wee Go To Sleep – to share her knowledge with families of young children. Sleep is not a one size fits all. Every child is different and some need more sleep than others. Cari works through sleep issues with parents to find the best sleep method for you and your little one. Find out more at WeeGoToSleep.com |
Top Left Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks
