Be Well: Adjusting Sleep Schedules for Return to School

<div class="block">Dr. Sanjeev Kothare, director of Northwell Health&#39;s Sleep Center, joined Cheddar News to talk about healthy sleep habits, particularly as parents look to readjust their children&#39;s&#39; schedules ahead of the return to school.</div>

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Be Well: Adjusting Sleep Schedules for the Return to School

As we continue to get you and your kids ready for back to school parents, it's really time to start thinking about putting your kids back on a regular bedtime routine and we'll send it over to Elizabeth who has tips to make that transition a bit easier. Thanks Shannon. Well, it's time to think about back to school and all that goes along with it. And for parents that means getting your kids back on a schedule and making sure they get a good night's sleep. Doctor Sanji Qari is the director of the Sleep Center at North Well Health and he is one of the foremost sleep experts in our country and he is here to help us get a good night's sleep for our kids. So I do want to talk about when we get started, you know, in the summer, we kind of relax the rules a little bit, it's lighter later. So kids get into maybe some not fantastic sleep habits. So when do I need to start kind of pulling back the rain? First of all, thank you for having me. Thank you. And you know, I think as you correctly mentioned, most of these kids have a good time in summer sleep, late, wake up, late, take afternoon naps and their whole sleep wake cycles is a mess at best. Now, one week before school is supposed to start is a time to start getting back into the rhythm, which means that start sleeping at least by 9 30 10, wake up at 7 38 o'clock, try not to take an afternoon nap and, and avoid all caffeinated drinks after two o'clock in the afternoon and, and exercise more in the daytime, not in the late evening. And, and those are healthy tips to bring back your circadian rhythms back to the normal school rhythm. And now, how many hours do Children actually need? And does it differ greatly between my, my little little ones and my teenagers? Because it seems like the teenagers want to sleep the most. So, um, the uh elementary school Children probably need about 10 hours of sleep. Uh, the middle school needs about nine hours and uh the, in the high school probably need 8.5, but they get seven hours, six hours even five hours because of their crazy sleep patterns. They do at night. Sure. And now what about weekends are weekends? Like, hey, it's the weekend we can stay up late, we can do all the fun things. Or should I really try to stick to that same schedule? So that's the biggest problem with teenagers. They think that they can have all night on weekdays and make up on the weekend. It doesn't work. The brain does not allow you to make up really that much. You need to have similar schedules on weekdays and weekends. I mean, I can give you an hour or two concession on Friday and Saturday night. But come Sunday night, you have to back your rhythm because otherwise your Monday is going to be a mess waking up in the morning and the sleep debt keeps on worsening as the week goes by. So just be aware that your sleep patterns are very important for your daytime cognitive function. So when you're talking about that sleep debt, if I know my child didn't get enough sleep one night, can they make it up with a nap the next day? So if you take a nap, it should be maybe 20 minutes, maximum, 30 minutes. What we have seen is that if you take more than half an hour of sleep, you go into a slow way of sleep and when you go into slow way of sleep and you wake up from it, you're really kind of groggy, depressed because your slow wave sleep increases the gabba in the brain and the gamma makes you depressed. So 30 minutes max don't put an alarm and wake up and take it earlier in the evening rather than late in the evening. Otherwise your sleep at night is going to be disturbed again. All right, I'm wishing everybody a good night's sleep. Thank you so much for joining us and for so many great tips.