One of the biggest challenges in parenting is establishing a consistent bedtime for your child. To make your evenings smoother, consider creating a bedtime routine!

Research shows that children benefit from a bedtime routine in several ways: language development, literacy, child emotional and behavioral regulation, parent-child attachment, and family functioning. Further, a consistent bedtime routine promotes healthy sleep for children when it incorporates activities related to nutrition, hygiene, communication, and physical contact. 

A bedtime routine doesn’t have to be complex and it can even be fun! To make bedtime more enjoyable, we’ve created a simple to follow guide for creating and maintaining a consistent bedtime routine that can help your child fall asleep more easily and enjoy restful nights. Let’s dive in!

Set a Consistent Time for a Bed Routine

A successful bedtime routine relies on consistency and timing. Children who go to bed and wake up at the same time every day benefit from aligning their natural circadian rhythm, making it easier for them to fall asleep. Consistency ensures that your child is getting enough sleep and waking up feeling refreshed.

A recent Better Sleep Council survey shows that 89 percent of children whose parents considered them excellent sleepers reported that their child has a consistent bedtime on at least three of five school nights. The survey also shows that children without a consistent bedtime on school nights are 3.5 times more likely to sleep poorly.

How do you determine the correct bedtime for your child?

Start by figuring out their morning wake-up time.. Then count backwards using these guidelines to calculate their ideal bedtime:

• Babies (4 to 12 months old): 12 to 16 hours, including naps
• Toddlers (12 to 24 months old): 11 to 14 hours, including naps
• Preschoolers (3 to 5 years old): 10 to 13 hours, including naps
• School-Aged Children (6 to 12 years old): 9 to 12 hours
• Teenagers (13 to 18 years old): 8 to 10 hours

For example, if your 5-year-old needs to wake up at 7:30 a.m., their bedtime should be between 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Then, add the time you plan to spend winding down for the night, which we will cover next!

Wind-Down Activities for Healthy Sleep

Winding-down activities signal that bedtime is approaching and can give your child a good chance for a restful night’s sleep. Babies may begin drifting off to sleep after a soothing lullaby. Toddlers and young school-age children may like to play an easy family card game before it’s time for bed, while teenagers may enjoy listening to music to help them relax. A warm bath can be especially effective for kids of all ages as it relaxes the muscles and raises body temperature. When they cool down, it mimics the natural drop in temperature making it easier to fall asleep.

Parents magazine suggests allotting 15 to 60 minutes for a bedtime routine, depending on your child’s age and how established they are with the routine. If the evening includes a bath or shower, make sure to add a little extra time. 

Here are some additional suggestions for calming bedtime activities to help your kids sleep better!

Babies

Short, soothing bedtime activities are good for newborns and infants because they are in the early stages of learning when to sleep. Wind-down activities may feel like a broken record at this age, but don’t worry! If you think your routine is too dull because your baby prefers the same bedtime story night after night, they’ll eventually learn to enjoy other things. Consider a few of these activities for your baby’s bedtime routine:

• Diaper changes
• Swaddling or dressing in sleep sacks/pajamas
• Feeding
• White noise
• Lullabies
• Books
• Bath
• Gentle Rocking

Toddlers and Preschoolers

Toddlers and preschoolers are typically energetic and curious, making winding down challenging for this age group. Choosing calming activities your toddler or preschooler enjoys can help them wind down quicker – without throwing a tantrum. Good activities that signal bedtime are putting away toys in their play area and brushing their teeth. Depending on their interests, you can also add these activities to their bedtime routine:

• Reading books together
• Working on a puzzle
• Talking about their day
• Sensory activities such as swinging or rocking
• A light, sugar-free snack

School-Aged Children and Teens

School-aged children and teens have added responsibilities that can interfere with bedtime routines, such as homework, sports, time with friends, or part-time employment. Since their lives are busier, they need to turn off their minds to get a good night’s sleep.

Particularly with teenagers, their bedtime routine becomes a bit less structured, and they can do many activities independently. Some relaxing activities to suggest include:

• Gentle stretching or yoga
• Guided meditation
• Deep breathing exercises
• Arts and crafts
• Journaling
• Listening to relaxing music
• Preparing for the next day

You may have noticed that these bedtime activities don’t include screens. If your child has screen time, consider changing the backlight to “night mode” at least three hours before bedtime, and then turn it off or put it away at least one hour prior to bed. Not only does this give their eyes a break, but screens emit blue light that interferes with melatonin production, a hormone that regulates sleep.

Regarding smartphones, the Better Sleep Council survey found that children who have access to or use smartphones before bed on school nights make up 65% of poor sleepers, and those who don’t use smartphones before bed are 1.8 times more likely to be excellent sleepers.

Maintaining Your Child’s Bedtime Routine

Now that you know how to create a bedtime routine, ensure it sticks! Remember, a consistent bedtime routine leads to healthier sleep and good bedtime habits that continue into adulthood.

Create a Cozy Bedroom

A unique, personalized space for sleep not only signals that it’s time for bed but that it’s time to relax. As your child ages, you’ll want to maintain a sense of tranquility by adjusting these elements of a cozy bedroom:

• Lighting: Room-darkening window coverings keep evening and morning light from interrupting your child’s sleep. You may want to include turning off the lights in their bedtime routine because sleeping in a dark space is healthier for your child.

If monsters under the bed are a nightly complaint, a dimmer switch allows just enough light in their room so they feel safe and secure. Again, turn off or remove screens from your child’s bedroom to eliminate blue lights. Yellow light, not blue or LED lighting, is recommended for bedrooms.

• Sound: Shutting the bedroom door signals that it’s time to sleep and blocks noise from the rest of your house. If your child has a hard time sleeping in complete silence, consider using white or brown noise from a fan, air purifier, or white noise machine.

• Temperature: A bedroom that is too hot or cold can disrupt your child’s sleep. A temperature around 65 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal for most children. For babies, the temperature should be a bit higher – between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit – since their bodies are still developing and they cannot regulate their body temperature.

• Bedding: As your child grows, their bed and mattress should grow with them. When your child is two years old or 35 inches tall, it’s time to consider moving them from a crib to a regular bed. Twin mattresses are a good size for this transition, but parents are increasingly opting for full sizes that accommodate their growth and changing needs. However, if their mattress is over seven years old, it’s time for a replacement!

Make Adjustments as Needed

When changing your child’s bedtime routine, remember that it may take a few days or weeks to fully adjust. A few occasions that may require adjustments include:

• Needing a different amount of sleep
• Periods of stress
• Moving to a new home
• Starting or finishing a school year
• Illnesses

Celebrate Your Child’s Bedtime Routine

Establishing a consistent bedtime routine for your child can be an enjoyable process, but it won’t happen overnight. Feel free to experiment with different times and wind-down activities to find the best combination for your child. It will all be worth it when your child – and the rest of your family – fall asleep easier and enjoy more restful nights!

The Sleep Cycle: Understanding the Basics

Sleep has four main cycles, alternating between non-REM and REM (rapid eye movement) phases. It’s during REM sleep that most dreaming occurs. This stage is very active for the brain, characterized by rapid eye movements and your muscles relaxing. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke maps out this journey, showing us just how essential each phase is for truly restorative sleep. 

What Happens in Our Brain When We Dream?

When we dream, our brains are busy, with different parts of the brain playing different roles: the amygdala processes our emotions, the hippocampus handles memories, and the prefrontal cortex is usually less active, which is why our dreams can be so wild and imaginative. This mix of brain activity is the perfect cocktail for these vivid nighttime narratives.

The Purpose and Significance of Dreams

Theories on why we dream encompass a range of psychological and physiological explanations. Some theories suggest that dreams play a crucial role in emotional processing, problem-solving, and memory consolidation. The connection between dreaming and our cognitive processes is what makes them so significant for our mental health.

Understanding Dream Themes and Interpretations

Do your dreams ever feel like a replay of your day or a deep dive into your emotions? That’s no coincidence. When it comes to the science of dreams, these recurring themes often draw from our daily experiences. 

Curious about further decoding these messages? The Better Sleep Council offers great tips on how to interpret what our dreams are trying to tell us.

The Impact of External Factors on Dreams

Dreams are fascinating windows into our subconscious, but they’re also shaped by what happens in our waking lives. Here are a few external factors that can significantly impact our dreams:

• Stress: High levels of stress can lead to more vivid and intense dreams, as our minds try to process and cope with our daily pressures.
• Diet: The foods we consume before bedtime can influence the clarity and content of our dreams, with some foods known to trigger more vivid dreamscapes.
• Media Consumption: The movies, TV shows, and online content we consume just before sleep can influence our dreams, often shaping the narratives that unfold.
• Exercise: Participating in physical activity, especially close to bedtime, can affect the patterns of our dreams, sometimes making them more vivid or easier to remember.
• Sleeping Environment: Everything from the comfort of our mattress to the ambiance of our room, can impact what we dream about.

Grasping the science behind our dreams helps us understand how our daily lives shape the wild adventures we experience while sleeping. By exploring the impact of external factors, we can refine our bedtime routines to gain more restful sleep and a better understanding of ourselves. Prioritizing good sleep is vital for our overall health, and tuning into our dreams is a significant part of that process. So tonight, as you drift off, remember: sweet dreams are made of these good habits.

Looking for tips on cultivating sleep habits that enhance dream quality and promote REM sleep? The Sleep Foundation offers valuable insights that can assist with keeping your mind sharp and your emotions in check.
If you’re ready to dive deeper into what your dreams might be telling you, exploring the insights in ‘How to Interpret Dreams’ can open up a new understanding of your dreams, paving the way to a happier and healthier you.

The average teenager spends more than 15 hours a week on homework. On a typical school night, they spend over 2 hours on homework. The more stress a teen feels, the more likely they are to spend even more time on homework.

What are the causes of stress for high school students?

Grades/test scores and homework are overwhelmingly the top two causes of stress for all teenagers. The more stress a teen feels, the more likely they are to say grades/test scores and homework cause them stress.

What are the sleep behaviors of teenagers?

More than half of all teenagers do not feel they get enough sleep. More than three-fourths (79%) get 7 hours of sleep or less on a typical school night. Only about one in five teens are getting 8 hours of sleep or more. 43% of teens are going to bed at 11 p.m. or later and about one-third (33%) of these same teens are waking up at 6 a.m. or earlier. The more stressed a teen feels, the more likely they are to get less sleep, go to bed later and wake up earlier. They are also more likely to have trouble going to sleep and staying asleep – more often than their less-stressed peers.

Methodology

The online survey was fielded between 9/27/18 and 9/29/18 with 1,004 teenagers across the United States. Lucid, a global company with industry-leading automated sampling, provided the sample. All respondents were between the ages of 13 and 19 and currently attending high school. About half of the respondents were seniors and three-quarters were 16 years of age or older. A detailed breakdown is below.

Reported typical grades in school

Reported effort in grade achievement

Reported time spent on homework

• Teenagers who report that they spend time on homework in a given week say they spend over 2 hours on homework on a typical school night (mean = 2.38)
• More than one-third (39%) of those teenagers report that they spend 3 hours or more on homework on a typical school night
• Teens who feel more stress (Q14 = 4 or 5) are more likely than less-stressed teens to spend 3 or more hours on homework on a typical school night (48%/25%)

Reported time spent per week on various activities

Previous Related Research

“Results indicated that students in these schools average more than three hours of homework per night. Students who did more hours of homework experienced greater behavioral engagement in school, but also more academic stress, physical health problems and lack of balance in their lives.”

Source: Mollie Galloway, Jerusha Conner and Denise Pope (2013) “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools,” The Journal of Experimental Education, 81:4, 490-510, DOI: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469

Cheung and Leung-Ngai found that hours of homework, coupled with homework difficulty and social pressures for doing homework were associated with increased somatic symptoms (e.g., headaches, faintness), depressive symptoms and anxiety.

Source: Cheung, S. K., and Leung-Ngai, J. M. Y. (1992). Impact of homework stress on children’s physical and psychological well-being. Journal of the Hong Kong Medical Association, 44, 146-150.

Further, the experience of exhaustion after homework was the best predictor of these somatic symptoms. In a study of 1,457 students in Grades 5-12, Yang, Kim, Patel and Lee (2005) found that academic demands featured prominently among the reasons students gave for their sleep deprivation.

Source: Yang, C. K., Kim, J. K., Patel, S. R., & Lee, J. H. (2005). Age-related changes in sleep/wake patterns among Korean teenagers. Pediatrics, 115, 250–256. doi: 10.1542/peds.2004-0815G.

Teens and Sleep

Reported hours of sleep per night

Reported difficulty in sleeping

Correlation between sleep and stress

• More than three-quarters (76%) of teens who feel more stress (Q14 = 4 or 5) say they don’t feel they get enough sleep, which is significantly higher than teens who are not stressed (Q14 = 1, 2 or 3) – only 42% of them feel they don’t get enough sleep

Previous Related Research

Many complained that the workload led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. Students described homework as the “main reason” preventing them from getting the recommended 9.25 hours of sleep each night: “I’m up until usually 1:30 a.m. working [on homework] and I get very little sleep.” Another, after stating “homework load” as his primary stressor responded as follows: “I rarely make it to bed before midnight and wake up early to finish it.” Many students recognized the importance of rest and rejuvenation, but found it nearly impossible to achieve these goals with such heavy workloads. As one student wrote: There’s never a time to rest. There’s always something more you should be doing. If I go to bed before 1:30, I feel like I’m slacking off, or just screwing myself over for an even later night later in the week . . . There’s never a break. Never.

Source: Mollie Galloway, Jerusha Conner and Denise Pope (2013) “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools,” The Journal of Experimental Education, 81:4, 490-510, DOI: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469

Another similarly expressed: I go to school for 10 hours, from 7:30 to 5:30 … After a 10-hour day, when I get home, I want to chill and relax, and actually eat a good meal and get a good night’s rest. That way I can go to school the next day, ready to learn, and to be attentive and participate in class.

This student’s comment also suggests that homework overload, coupled with lack of sleep, can limit capacity to learn.

According to Johns Hopkins pediatrician Michael Crocetti, M.D., M.P.H., teens need 9 to 9 1/2 hours of sleep per night – that’s an hour or so more than they needed at age 10. Why? “Teenagers are going through a second developmental stage of cognitive maturation,” explains Crocetti. Additional sleep supports their developing brain, as well as physical growth spurts. It also helps protect them from serious consequences like depression or drug use.

Source: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/healthy-sleep/sleep-better/teenagers-and-sleep-how-much-sleep-is-enough

The aforementioned quantitative results presented indicate that a significant number of high school students in our sample are doing several hours of homework per night, and the more homework students report doing, the more they report school stress, physical distress (including lack of sleep) … The majority (56%) of students indicated homework as a primary stressor. Homework was listed most often as a primary stressor, although 43% of students listed tests as a primary stressor, and 33% listed grades and/or getting good grades as a primary stressor.

Source: Mollie Galloway, Jerusha Conner and Denise Pope (2013) “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools,” The Journal of Experimental Education, 81:4, 490-510, DOI: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469

The findings strongly suggest that: (a) students of different education levels (from school to university) are chronically sleep deprived or suffer from poor sleep quality and consequent daytime sleepiness; (b) sleep quality and quantity are closely related to student learning capacity and academic performance; (c) sleep loss is frequently associated with poor declarative and procedural learning in students.

Source: Giuseppe, C., Ferrara, M., and De Gennaro, L. (2006). Sleep loss, learning capacity and academic performance. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10, 323-337

Teens and Stress

• On a scale from 1 to 5 where “1” means No stress at all and “5” means Extremely stressed, how much stress do you typically feel?

• Stress seems to increase with each grade, and Seniors are more likely to feel stress than Freshmen or Sophomores

• What causes stress in your life? Select all that apply.

• About three-quarters of all teens say either grades/test scores (75%) and/or homework (74%) causes stress in their life
• Teens who feel more stress (Q14 = 4 or 5) are more likely than less-stressed teens to say homework/test scores cause them stress in their life (87%/63%)
• Teens who feel more stress (Q14 = 4 or 5) are more likely than less-stressed teens to say homework causes them stress in their life (89%/65%)
• Teenage girls are more likely to say this than teenage boys

• 84% of girls say grades/test scores cause stress in their life compared to only 68% of boys
• 80% of girls say homework causes stress in their life compared to only 68% of boys
  • Reported top sources of stress

Previous Related Research

[Research conducted by] Wolfson and Carskadon, who studied (by means of a health and behavior survey with self-reported grades) sleep patterns and daytime functioning in about 3,000 high school students. They showed that students with higher grades reported more total sleep, earlier bedtimes on school nights and reduced weekend delays of sleep schedules than students with lower grades. These data of better performance as a consequence of “hygienic” sleep patterns were confirmed by several studies indicating a poorer school achievement, a greater tendency to fall asleep in school, more difficulties in concentration and in focusing attention in students with an evening circadian typology, earlier school starting times and a mild delayed sleep phase syndrome.

… regardless of the theoretical framework adopted (dual process hypothesis or sequential processing hypothesis), both REM and NREM sleep seem necessary for learning and memory: thus, for an efficient consolidation of both (declarative) knowledge and (procedural) skills, the worst risk is sleep loss or fragmentation. Moreover, it was shown that an increasing daytime sleepiness, as a consequence of poor sleep quality, can seriously impair students’ cognitive functioning and behavioral performance.

Source: Giuseppe, C., Ferrara, M., and De Gennaro, L. (2006). Sleep loss, learning capacity and academic performance. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10, 323-337

Additional Statistical Analysis

To further understand the relationship between stress, sleep and academic performance additional statistical analysis was conducted.

Based on their sleeping habits, all respondents are regrouped into four groups as shown below.

Conclusion #1: The less students sleep, the more time they spend on homework.

The “Sleep Late & Wake Up Early” group even spends at least half an hour more on homework than “Sleep Early” group. However, their efforts don’t pay in aspect of their grades! No significant difference is found. In fact, they are more likely to get bad grades (C and C below).

Conclusion #2: Students who get enough sleep are more likely to get good grades.

Having a hard time falling asleep frequently increases the chances of getting bad grades.

Conclusion #3: Stress can be reduced by improving students’ sleep habits

Stress could be introduced or eliminated by different sleeping habits. We find that the group that get the most abundant sleep group (sleep early and wake up early group) are less likely (35%) to get stressed out than they don’t, while the group that get the least amount of sleep (sleep late and wake up early) has significantly more chance (136%) to get stressed out than others. This group spend much more time working on the homework than unstressed group (2.72 hrs. vs 1.9928 hrs.). However, they don’t get better grades. Yes. They sacrifice the sleep time, spend extra amount of time on homework, bear extra stress but they don’t get better grades.

Bad sleep habits (sleep late) also reduce the quality of sleep and bring issues. The “Sleep Late & Wake Up Late” group, although they don’t wake up early, still the majority of them feel that they don’t get enough sleep (74.8% comparing to 49.5% of sleep early and wake up early group, a group that get similar amount of sleep time). Sleeping issues and bad sleep quality reduce the chances of getting good grades. The group who always have trouble falling asleep is 92% more likely to get C or below than they get As.