It’s back to school; here’s how much sleep your child needs to succeed

This week is back-to-school for many students across Utah. For many parents like me, it also means back-to-routines, something that benefits children and adults, including those of us who are neurodivergent and/or highly sensitive. Author Brianna Wiest noted: “As children, routine gives us a feeling of safety. As adults, it gives us a feeling of purpose.”
I usually have the thought at the beginning of summer break that I’m going to keep my kids on the school sleep schedule of going to bed at a normal time and waking up early, but that usually lasts until they ask if they can have a late night, and then the rest of the summer is thrown off.
You can find lots of advice about transitioning your child to a more school-friendly bedtime in the last few weeks of summer vacation, or you can be like me and have one last “late night,” then get your child up extra early on the first day, knowing they’ll be tired in the evening. (And please understand — “late night” in our house is about 10 p.m. If we really stretch it, then 11 p.m.)
The National Sleep Foundation suggests:
One of the school year routines in our house is that devices have an earlier bedtime than people — tablets, phones and computers are plugged in for the night a couple of hours before sleep time. That lets us all have some time as a family to read, play games, talk about how the day went and what we anticipate for the next day. We sometimes use devices for white noise or relaxation music.
Children and adults benefit from morning routines. You can find, for example, books and podcasts on leadership that promote winning the day by getting up at 5 a.m. (or earlier) and having a series of steps (routines) that you do each day. Kids are no different, but sleeping in until 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. is just fine, of course.
My highly sensitive fifth grader needs to make fewer decisions when she first wakes up, so we do as much as we can to prepare the night before. That includes setting out the next day’s clothes so she doesn’t have to stress about that choice in the morning. I saw a recent idea online that uses a closet shoe holder to hold a week’s worth of outfits. Choosing them can be done on the weekend and then we can focus our morning time on other parts of our routines. (Have you seen the skin care routines of today’s 10-year-olds, without makeup? They are intense, even if they’re not becoming a “Sephora Kid.”)
Eating a healthy breakfast is important, too. It’s still a struggle at our house, so if you’ve found ways to get protein into your picky kids before they head out the door, please let me know!
The after-school routines for my children have varied, based on their needs and extracurricular activities they may have been involved in. Currently, my child needs at least 30 minutes on her own or with her little dog to re-center herself before jumping into homework and even after-school snacks. She has a small desk set aside for schoolwork and artwork, with supplies set out in order. Some of my kids did their homework at the kitchen table while they ate and chatted with me. Children need a consistent work space in their bedroom or another part of the home that is quiet, without distractions, and promotes study, says the American Academy of Pediatrics. It also recommends scheduling ample time and space for homework, without the TV and other electronic distractions.
I’m in between having elementary-aged children with no phones or social media and junior high and high school students who have both. We have already begun conversations about online safety and will continue those as our fifth grader gets older. When I had teens, we had guidelines on social media usage and safety.
For adults without kids at home right now, turn “afterschool routines” into “afterwork routines.” Are you exercising before or after work? Do you need 30 minutes to yourself before you reengage with people? Do you change into “play clothes”? Get a snack?
One of the routines in our home is that after a number of years of no dinner routine, we finally settled in to a normal dinner time that we adhere to closely during the school year. Our young adult kids who no longer live at home know they can drop by any evening at 6 p.m. and join us for dinner. We also have found that planning weekly menus and buying all the supplies on the weekend makes dinner time go much more smoothly.
White space is the concept in art and writing that there must be some negative space to accentuate the art or the words that are on the page. Our lives need white space, too.
It’s really easy to overschedule ourselves and our children. Being stretched too thin, overscheduled and overburdened, with no room to breathe, eventually catches up with you. Relationships suffer, mental health suffers, your body’s immunity to disease suffers, your resilience suffers and your productivity suffers. It’s a tired Bilbo Baggins saying, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
Employees with no room for white space in their jobs become less productive, less creative, less satisfied with their jobs and less likely to stay with that company. Overscheduled kids don’t learn how to relax on their own, don’t know how to fill their own time and feel stressed “all the time,” reports Psychology Today, leading to depression and anxiety.
You and your children need time to unwind, time to be spontaneous and time with nothing on your calendar. And you need to schedule those times into your routines.
I love heading into autumn. I love the goal-setting that happens and I love the recommitment to routines that comes with the change of season. Even if getting back into routines is a bit bumpy, I know it will be short term and then our family will reap the benefits of a dependable routine.