For kids, summer is a time for schedule-free fun and leisure. But as summer vacation draws to a close, it’s time for everyone in the family to start preparing for a return to school night bedtime routines.
Sleep is an essential component of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for people of all ages. By clocking a sufficient amount of shut-eye at night, you will be more likely to sail through your day in an alert and energized state.
Getting enough sleep is especially important for children and teens, who need sleep to perform well in school. To help families prioritize healthy sleep, the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project has created a calculator to help each member of the family identify an appropriate bedtime.
Personalized recommendations
The Bedtime Calculator is based on the sleep duration recommendations of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), which state that children and teens should get the following amounts of sleep at night:
Infants 4 months to 12 months old: 12-16 hours (including naps)
Children 1 to 2 years old: 11-14 hours (including naps)
Children 3 to 5 years old: 10-13 hours (including naps)
Children 6 to 12 years old: 9-12 hours per night.
Teenagers 13 to 18 years old: 8-10 hours per night
To use the online bedtime calculator, simply choose your age and wake time. To see how a different wake time will affect when you should go to bed, choose a different wake time on the slider.
Lost Sleep Calculator
While it’s recommended that adults get seven or more hours of nightly sleep, many parents are used to having their slumber disrupted by children.
The Lost Sleep Calculator, created by British interior design company Hillary’s, can show you just how much sleep you have missed out on over the years because of your kids. To use it, simply enter the age of each of your children in years and months then hit the “calculate my lost sleep button.”
In addition to letting you know precisely how sleep-deprived you are, the Lost Sleep Calculator will regale you with other interesting facts about your child-rearing journey. Parents can see, for instance, how many lullabies they have sung, how many diapers they have changed, and how many bedtime stories they have read.