The school season will begin right around the corner, and most kids have gotten used to staying up a little later than usual…
Dr. Kevin Reichmuth is a Medical Director for the sleep-lab at Bryan Health urges parents to slowly transition your kids into their school year sleep schedule.
“Definitely not ideal to do it the night before the first day of school… ‘like okay, here’s your bedtime.’ So ideally, start this at least a week ahead of school starting, if not even two weeks or more. It’s not going to be very tolerable for them to just immediately go to the synced up bedtime,” said Dr. Reichmuth.
Even with parents best efforts, kids may very well be resistant to getting out of bed and ready for that first week back to school. Dr. Reichmuth offered this advice, “The key is when they get up in the morning, try to get them sunlight exposure, get them out to the park or for a walk…. if they can get synced up with all of those routines, it’ll help them adapt to being back into the school rhythm.”
According to Dr. Reichmuth, for the kids going to school without enough rest, “It’s going to affect their concentration and learning and they may have a hard time keeping their eyes open in those early morning classes. But even if they don’t, we certainly know rest levels does affect the learning potential and retention that goes into school…and then irritability and those other physical symptoms as well.”
To ease into getting your kids back on the school year schedule, Doctor Reichmuth says its ideal to start inching back bed times by 15-30 minutes for 2 weeks leading up to the school year starting.