Episode 251

show Notes

elementary school sleep

Back-to-school season is here, and while parents are busy shopping for backpacks, lunchboxes, and school supplies, one of the most important tools for a successful school year often gets overlooked: sleep.

In this episode, Allison explains why sleep is one of the biggest predictors of academic success, emotional regulation, physical health, and overall well-being for elementary-aged children. Drawing from more than a decade of experience working with families, and her own experiences raising two daughters, she shares how to tell if your child is simply getting by or truly thriving.

You’ll learn how much sleep elementary school children really need, why bedtime matters more than many parents realize, how to adjust your child’s schedule before school starts, and why missing your child’s natural sleep window can actually make bedtime harder.

Allison also shares a personal story about how just two later bedtimes each week noticeably affected her daughter’s school performance, illustrating just how powerful adequate sleep can be.

Whether your child is entering kindergarten or finishing elementary school, this episode will help you create healthy sleep habits that support learning, behavior, and a smoother school year.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
— The difference between a child who is “getting by” versus truly thriving
— How much sleep elementary school children actually need
— Why sleep before learning, after learning, and before a test all matter
— How sleep impacts learning, memory, behavior, emotional regulation, and anxiety
— Why sleep deprivation can mimic ADHD symptoms
— The surprising way a small amount of lost sleep affected Allison’s daughter’s grades
— How to shift your child’s sleep schedule before school begins
— Why catching your child’s natural “sleep wave” makes bedtime easier
— How to avoid the bedtime second wind
— Simple evening habits that promote better sleep
— When to use an earlier “rescue bedtime” during the school year

Chapter Markers
00:00 Welcome + Why I’m Writing a Maine Family Travel Guide
02:28 Intro: Why Sleep Is an Elementary School Superpower
03:35 Is Your Child Just Getting By…or Truly Thriving?
05:57 How Much Sleep Do Elementary Schoolers Really Need?
08:56 Why Sleep Matters for Learning, Behavior & Anxiety
11:28 The UVA Basketball Experiment: How Two Hours of Lost Sleep Changed My Daughter’s Grades
14:22 How to Shift Your Child’s Schedule Before School Starts
16:04 Why Earlier Bedtimes Often Work Better (The “Second Wind” Explained)
18:55 Evening Habits That Help Kids Fall Asleep Faster
19:48 Resources: The Well-Rested Student Workshop & Sleep Consultations
20:35 Key Takeaways for a Successful School Year

Resources mentioned:
Get more help with Allison’s on demand workshop, The Well-Rested Student: Helping Your Child Sleep Better This School Year or with a one on one consultation

Give your child the gift of better sleep. Allison’s free, age-specific guides show you exactly how many hours of rest kids need to grow, learn, and thrive—no matter their age. Get your free copy now: 0-2 Years Old or 3 to 10 years old

From baby sleep to toddler sleep, daycare naps to sleep training—How Long ’Til Bedtime? is the podcast for parents who want practical, guilt-free sleep tips they can actually use.

Hosted by pediatric sleep coach Allison Egidi, each episode delivers real solutions for every stage—from navigating newborn sleep struggles and weaning night feedings to helping your 3-year-old fall asleep independently (and stay asleep!). Whether you’re trying to make sense of daycare sleep patterns, craving your evenings back, or simply need a working mom podcast to keep you grounded, you’re in the right place.

Want more from Allison? Sign up here to get her weekly email with podcast updates and other helpful parenting topics.

Enjoying How Long ‘Til Bedtime?
Your rating and review help Allison reach and support more parents.
— On Apple Podcasts: Click here, scroll to the bottom, rate the show, and tap “Write a Review.”
— On Spotify: Click here to leave a rating or review.
Don’t miss an episode—subscribe so you’re always up to date!

Connect with Allison:
Instagram | Facebook | Website | YouTube

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

251. How to Help Your Elementary School Child Sleep Better This School Year
Before I dive in today, I want to talk about a new blog post that I’m planning to write. When I started my business back in 2016, I used to write blog posts from time to time. I wrote quite a few of them. But since starting this podcast back in 2021, I’ve only written one post, and that was about our trip to Paris back in 2023 and my tips for traveling to Paris with kids.

And as I’m recording this, we are preparing to head to Boston and then more noteworthy into Maine for a family vacation. And for this trip, heading somewhere new where we haven’t gone, and there’s a lot of options, I definitely did use AI to help me with some of the planning. But the reality is that hearing how other families that I know or people I’ve met navigated their Maine trips, and particularly their hiking with kids, has been so incredibly helpful to my planning. In fact, this week I played a woman in a tennis match who I’ve just met a couple of times, but her kids are of similar age, and they had been to Maine earlier this summer, and she pulled out her Acadia map and showed me the hikes and explained why they had to change their plans and exactly what they did.

Long story short, I totally shifted our hiking plan, and I’m now doing exactly what this woman recommended. So as I’m recording this, I am in the middle of packing us for a trip that we are leaving on tomorrow. And no, I am not ready. But last night, as I was wrapping up some of our planning, I decided that I want to keep notes throughout this particular trip, just like I did when we went to Paris. And I’m going to share my recommendations in a blog post. So when I get back, I will be following up with you all on our family adventures in Maine and things that worked and things that I wish we had done differently.

Okay, on to today’s episode. When this comes out, it will officially be August, which means it is back to school season. And if you have an elementary schooler, today’s episode is for you.

Hey there, Allison here. Welcome back to How Long ‘Til Bedtime. I want to start with something I genuinely believe after 10 years of working with families and recently having had two elementary school age children of my own. Sleep is one of the most underrated tools for academic success, emotional regulation, and just overall well-being in elementary age children. And it is one of the most commonly underprioritized tools.

Today I hope I can convince you not to overlook this back to school item. We’re going to talk about how much sleep your elementary schooler actually needs, how to tell if they’re thriving or just getting by, how to get their schedule ready before school starts, and the practical habits that make the biggest difference throughout the school year.

I want to start with a framework that I use with every family I work with because I think it often leads to a mindset shift. And that’s talking about the difference between getting sleep to get by versus getting enough sleep to truly thrive. And I want you to really take a moment to think about which category your child is really in. And that can be before the school year starts, as it gets started, and throughout the school year.

So a child who is quote getting by might look like this. They are slow or hard to wake up in the morning. They have behavior struggles at school, meaning difficulty following classroom rules, blurting things out versus raising their hand, struggling to wait their turn. They might be moody or irritable after school or in the evenings. They may get sick more often or take longer to recover from the random everyday illnesses going around school. They may struggle to retain what they’ve learned without a lot of review. And they may seem more anxious than usual.

Now, the flip side is what it looks like to have a child who is truly thriving. They wake up in a good mood most mornings. They’re able to focus and follow instructions without constant reminding or redirection. They have energy to give their best in sports and other after-school activities. They’re able to handle disappointments and changes more smoothly. They retain what they learned at school without excessive review or studying. And they’re just generally more pleasant to be around. You think of them as operating as their best little self.

Now, with those descriptions, we can be talking about the same child, but under one scenario, they are just getting enough sleep to get by. And now in the other scenario, they’re getting the sleep they need to thrive. And the difference can be very significant. Now let’s talk numbers. How much sleep does your elementary schooler actually need?

For children ages 5 to 8, I like to see 10 and a half to 12 hours of sleep at night, which typically means a bedtime somewhere between 6:30 and 8 p.m. For children ages 9 to 12, that range shifts a little bit to 9 to 12 hours of sleep, with a bedtime typically between 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.

Now, I want to acknowledge that my recommendations are a bit higher than what you’ll see from the American Academy of Pediatrics. And that’s because I’m always focused on the amount of sleep that sets children up to be in that thrive category, thriving academically, emotionally, and physically. And for many children, that is more sleep than most people expect. And these ranges that I mentioned are actually really large because every child’s sleep needs are unique.

So I talk about this all the time, but my children are very different and unique in virtually every category. That’s why I always say they’re my best teachers. So my 12-year-old thrives with an 11-hour night of sleep and an ideal bedtime of like 7:30, 8 p.m., depending when she has to get up. Now, just to be clear, we don’t always hit that because of her sports or other things we have going on, but that’s her ideal and what we shoot for whenever we can, because that keeps her in the thrive category most of the time.
My 13-year-old, who is further along into puberty and has a circadian rhythm that has shifted, does best with a nine to 10 hour night of sleep and a bedtime between 9 and 9:30. These are children who are only 18 months apart and they have wildly different sleep needs and wildly different bedtimes. So kids who live in the same house, 18 months apart, very different sleep needs that put them in the thrive category. And that is not uncommon. So I share that because think it’s really important to get curious about every child who lives in your household and their unique sleep needs.

So, why is sleep so incredibly impactful on our young children? Here is what is actually happening in your child’s brain when they sleep and why it matters so much as they move into and go through elementary school. I like to say that sleep is like the save button for the brain. But it’s bigger than that. Sleep before learning, so a good night of sleep before they go into the classroom, sets the brain up to take in the new information that is presented. And then sleep after learning helps the brain organize and store what they learned in the classroom. And then sleep before a quiz or a test sets the brain up to be able to retrieve what it had stored before.

So when a child is chronically under slept, even modestly, they are fighting an uphill battle in the classroom every single day. And it’s not because they aren’t capable, it’s because their brain hasn’t had the chance to do what it needs to do overnight to prepare to learn, to actually learn, to remember what they learned, and then to recall what they learned.

And it’s not just academics. Research consistently shows that sleep affects emotional regulation and impulse control, meaning well-rested children have a longer fuse, fewer meltdowns, and more capacity to sit calmly and engage at school.

Sleep affects anxiety. Chronic sleep deprivation is linked to higher rates of anxiety in children in every single age group. And sleep deprivation can actually mimic the symptoms of ADHD. They have difficulty focusing, poor impulse control, and emotional dysregulation. I have worked with so many families who were receiving calls from school about their child’s behavior, and after we addressed sleep, their behavior improved dramatically. So before assuming that a child has an attention or behavior problem, it is always worth asking, are they getting enough sleep? And if you have a child who has diagnosed ADD or ADHD, it’s important to remember that if they are not getting adequate sleep, those symptoms are going to be amplified.

Now I want to share a personal story here because I think it is the most powerful illustration of what sleep actually does for a child’s academic performance. A few years ago, after over a decade of not going to evening UVA basketball games, I decided I was done staying home to prioritize bedtime seven nights a week. And I decided my girls were ready to handle some later nights since they were starting to really enjoy going to the games and we were all missing out.

So we started going to both men and women’s home games. My younger daughter was nine at the time, and in third grade, it’s the first grade where they start to get actual grades. And she’s my naturally more easygoing child and doesn’t really get cranky when she’s overtired. And she’s my more flexible child. And I thought she was going to be fine with, you know, on average, two later bedtimes each week. And she actually did appear to be fine. She did not act out of sorts. But then I noticed her grades coming home at the end of the week were starting to drop. Not dramatically. It actually took me a second to catch on to it, but they went from A pluses to B’s. This is a child who had been easily getting A pluses all throughout that fall without doing any studying.

But then after I watched B’s come home for a little over two weeks, I started to connect the dots. And I realized that the only thing that had changed was her sleep and these two on average later nights a week. So I said, we’re going to do an experiment. And I stopped taking her to the night games, not because I cared that she was getting B’s, but because I really wanted to know if sleep was the driver.
Within a week, you guys, her grades went back to A pluses. I didn’t change her diet. I didn’t hire a tutor. I didn’t add in any studying. I just gave her back her sleep. So just two less hours of sleep per week made a measurable difference in her academic performance. I share this story because I think parents often underestimate how directly sleep affects learning. And even though I knew this, my unintentional experiment was a really good reminder for me as well.

Here is the most practical thing you can do right now if you’re listening to this before school starts. Figure out what time your child needs to be up on school day mornings. If they are currently waking later than that because they’re on a summer sleep schedule, start shifting that schedule now. If school is starting within the next week, make that full shift. And you’re going to do it by waking them within 30 minutes of that school wake up time each morning leading up to school starting, and then shift that bedtime earlier as you wake them earlier.

If you’re listening to this after school has already started, just go ahead and shift the bedtime earlier and keep the bedtime consistent on the weekends as well. For most elementary schoolers ages five to eight, you’re going to be looking at a bedtime in that 7 to 7:30 window. For older elementary school kids, you might be looking at 7:30 to 8, maybe 8:30. And basically, you’re going to have to adjust in both age groups based on how they’re doing behavior-wise, academically, just their overall energy as well.

And remember, if you’re waking your child every morning to get them ready for school at this age, that is your clearest signal that they could benefit from an earlier bedtime and more sleep. In these pre-puberty years, specifically, your child should ideally be waking naturally, or at least not far off from when they would wake naturally.

Now, when I’m doing a speaking event at a school, it’s often at this point that parents start saying it would be possible to get their child more sleep because they have a hard time falling asleep at their current later bedtime. So earlier definitely wouldn’t work. But here’s something I think so many parents need to understand. Your child has a natural sleep rhythm. We all do. It’s a biological pull towards sleep that happens around the same time each evening. When you catch that sleep wave, bedtime and falling asleep is easier. They’re going to fall asleep faster, and they’re going to fall into a higher quality, more restorative sleep. But if you miss that window, even by 15, 20, 30 minutes, your child’s going to catch a second wind, and then it’s off to the races.

So here’s what that kind of looks like in practice, and what you can look for in your own house is one minute you’re seeing some signs, whatever your child’s signs are, of being tired. They’re yawning, they’re cranky, they’re quiet, they’re just kind of dragging. And then suddenly they’re bouncing off the walls with energy. That’s the second wind. And once it kicks in, falling asleep becomes much more challenging. So for those kids, eight and under, that second wind often kicks in somewhere between 7 and 7:30. Which is why, even though it’s counterintuitive, it’s often easier for young children to fall asleep at seven than it is at eight.

As children move through puberty, that is going to shift a bit. And their ideal bedtime is going to move a bit later. So they might be kind of in that 7:30 to 8:30 window. And so you have to just keep an eye on as our kids are entering that stage as they’re kind of later into elementary school, on well, what time is that second wind kicking in now? And when are you seeing the tired signs? And so that is the tricky part about elementary school as you get into those later years is there are some changes that happen. So we have to continue to stay curious about the timing of their sleep. But I generally in the elementary school years say, do the very best you can to protect that earlier bedtime window.

Now, if your child is taking a long time to settle and fall asleep, no matter what time you put them to bed, it might be time to re-evaluate the evening and what’s happening before bedtime and what’s happening with their bedtime routine. And there are a few key things that can make a big difference in that hour leading up to lights out. So think about limiting screens, keeping energy low key, avoiding bedtime snacks and making sure that the sleep environment is dark and cool. When those pieces come together with the right timing, most kids will start to significantly have improvement with how they settle into going to bed.

If you want to go deeper on this, I have two ways that I can help you. First, I have an online workshop called The Well Rested Student. And that covers everything that we talked about today and more. So it’s more detailed with practical strategies that you can start using to help around bedtime. So that’s $27, and I’ll link to it in the show notes, or you can find it on my workshop page, which is on sleepandwellnesscoach.com under the workshop tab.

And if you feel like your child needs more personalized support where we can look at their specific schedule, routine, and sleep challenges together, that’s exactly what we do in our one-on-one virtual sleep consultations. So you can always learn more about that at sleepandwellnesscoach.com.

So to wrap up, if you have an elementary schooler heading back to school this fall, here’s the key takeaways: sleep matters. It matters for learning, behavior, emotional regulation, anxiety, academic performance, and overall physical health. It affects every single part of your child’s school experience.

If your child could benefit from more sleep, start shifting the schedule now, if you haven’t already, and protect that hour before bedtime to the very best of your ability. And if in those first few weeks of school, things just feel rough, don’t hesitate to use a rescue bedtime while your child gets settled back in to the higher expectations of the school year. So a 6:30 or 7 p.m. bedtime for a few nights can really turn things around quickly.

So here’s to a great school year for you and your kids. If this episode was helpful, please share it with another parent who has a child in elementary school. And as always, thanks for listening. I hope you’ll come back again next week where we’ll be talking about tween and teen sleep. So I’ll see you there. Bye for now.