It’s time to get Back-to-School!
Kids and teens need good sleep. It helps them grow up, do better in sports, develop their creativity, better control their feelings, and stay focused and get good grades.
Fun facts about sleep
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Growing Up
Sleep, especially the deep sleep we get in the first half of the night, allows our body to release growth hormones. As per their name, these hormones help us grow and strengthen our muscles and bones. This is why during sleep, kids often have cramps during the night. Sleep is a prime time for growing up!
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Sports
Good quality sleep can increase our speed, strength, and accuracy during physical activities. Becoming a star player in the schoolyard means more than training our bodies, it also means allowing our body to rest and recover!
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Creativity
Sleep, especially rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep during which we dream, allows our brain to make new connections and solidify memories (e.g., like practicing a piano melody). These are also important for creative thinking. Therefore, sleep helps us connect ideas and supports our creative writing, visual art, music and more!
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Emotions
Good sleep helps us regulate our feelings by reducing the intensity of big feelings, toning down negative emotions and increasing positive emotions. It also helps us have better control over our feelings. These are key aspects for maintaining good relationships.
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Thinking and Learning
Sleep gives our brain the chance to sort through the memories we made during the day. It strengthens the important memories (e.g., like the math problem you practiced ten times in class) and gets rid of less important things (e.g., like the colour of your teacher’s magic marker). This means sleep is essential after study sessions and before exams! Good sleep helps us be rational, problem-solve, and pay attention to details. All of these are great skills for learning new things!
Going back to a regular school schedule can be tough, especially after a summer of late nights and even later mornings! The easiest way to get back to an earlier bed (and rise) time is to work in gradual 10-15 minute blocks.
Here is our step-by-step guide to get your child back to school schedule!
1. Estimate how long your child needs to sleep to feel rested.
Recommendations for school-aged children (6-12 years) are between 9 and 12 hours per night. Meanwhile, teens (13-18 years) need 8-10 hours of sleep. Yet, everyone is different! Make sure your child has the right amount of sleep THEY need to feel their best during the day.
2. Choose a wake time.
When does your child need to wake up to get ready, eat, and make it to school on time?
3. Work backwards!
At what time does your child need to be in bed and sleeping to get the recommended amount of sleep and still get up at the chosen wake time?
4. Move the bed and wake times back by 10-15 minutes each day until you reach the new schedule.
To make this process easier:
Avoid smartphones, computers, and video games at least 1 hour before bedtime. The light emitted from these devices makes it harder for our body to prepare for sleep.
Work with your child to create a bedtime routine that is relaxing and that they enjoy. This might include dimming the lights 1 hour before bed, reading a book or listening to relaxing music. Quiet activities are best.
In the morning, help your child get as much light as possible. Morning light is excellent to switch our body’s internal clock; it makes it easier to fall asleep and wake up earlier.
Keep your child active during the daytime. Physical exercise helps tire out the brain and the body, leading to deeper (and more restful) sleep.
5. Once you reach the right time, maintain a stable schedule every day, including weekends, to avoid the Monday grumpies!😉
If your child goes to bed late one night, don’t move their bed and wake times. Our brains make up for lost sleep with deeper sleep, not longer sleep.
Example:
My child needs to sleep 10 hours per night.
They need to wake up at 6:00 am to make it to school on time.
This means they need to be in bed and sleeping by 8:00 pm.
My child currently goes to sleep at 9:00 pm and wakes up at 7:00 am, which means I will need to move their bedtime and wake time back by 15 minutes for the next four days to get them back to their school sleep routine. Tonight, I will put them to bed at 8:45 pm and wake them up at 6:45 am tomorrow morning!
After these four days of gradual adjustments, I encourage my child to stick to this schedule 7 days a week.
Here are more resources to help your child sleep better
Better Nights, Better Days
This virtual eHealth intervention provides knowledge, healthy sleep practices, and behavioural intervention information to parents of children ages 1-12 years old, adolescents and youth.
Doze
Co-designed by youth for youth, the doze app is a unique approach to overcoming sleep problems. Tailored to each person’s sleep concerns, doze enables youth to better understand their sleep patterns and make changes for improvements.
Week for Better Sleep
March 15, 2024, World Sleep Day, marked the launch of the first Week for Better Sleep in Canada. For this initiative, we narrowed down important healthy sleep tips for preschoolers, school-aged children, adolescents, adults, and older adults (65+).
Is it time to get professional help?
Several types of sleep disorders affect children and teenagers and can be treated. Here are signs of some of the sleep disorders commonly seen in youth.
Your child may have insomnia if they:
take a while to fall asleep, wake up frequently in the night, or wake up well before they need to
feel tired, irritable or struggle with their thinking skills during the day
had these issues at least 3x/week for at least 3 months
Your child may have delayed sleep phase syndrome if they:
struggle to fall asleep at a decent time to be able to wake up on time for school in the morning
sleep in very late on weekends, when they are free to set their own schedule
have good resting sleep, as long as their sleep episode can be pushed back later than most kids their age
Your child may have sleep apnea if they:
are very sleepy during the day, even though they sleep for their usual amount of time
you hear them stop breathing or gasping for air during the night
If any of these scenarios sounds like it might be the case for your child, it might be time to seek the help of a health professional. Note that for insomnia, the first line recommended treatment does not involve any medication. It is called cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) and is often given by specialized psychologists. The good news is that this works as well for children and teens as it does for adults!
