In about a week, thousands of children are going to hop on the bus bright and early and head back to school. Many families have been working on maintaining a sleep schedule before the new school year begins. Doctors say sleep is just as important as a healthy diet.

Looking back to the pandemic, it continues to have detrimental impacts on children’s sleep. 

Dr. Amanda Hassinger started the UBMD Sleep Center in 2020. 

“Their sleep was worse," said Hassinger, medical director for the UBMD Sleep Center. "They were having more nightmares. There were children needing to sleep with someone else because of bedtime anxiety.” 

If this sounds like your child still today following the pandemic, you’re not alone in having an extra cuddle buddy at night. 

“They would go to bed when the parents were going to bed, which is far too late for a 6-year-old," Hassinger said. "And if you don't sleep on your biological rhythm, you know, if you sleep on an adult's schedule, not your schedule, then you just have a lot worse sleep.” 

The next thing is to know your child’s circadian rhythm — starting with school age, which is defined as ages 5 to 12. 

“The body at that age needs about nine to 12 hours of sleep per night every night in one consolidated period, most children around that age will want to go to bed close to 7:30, 8, 8:30," Hassinger said. 

Dr. Hassinger says between 80 and 90% of teenagers in America have sleep deprivation.

“You actually need about eight to 10 hours of sleep per night when you're a teenager," said Hassinger.

She says on average they’re getting six to seven. This is detrimental to frontal lobe growth, which continues until you’re 25. But there’s something she found. 

“Teenagers who do not get enough sleep have a much higher risk of depression and actually attempting suicide," Hassinger said.

She says right now you can help by having your child go to sleep half an hour early each week leading up to school. 

“And the key to all of that is you have to keep your schedule the same on weekdays as weekends," Hassinger said. "The circadian rhythm is incredibly sophisticated. It goes down to the cellular level, but it doesn't understand the five-day workweek. It cannot adjust Saturday to Tuesday.”

Technology can also cause problems. 

“Watching a TV in your room or you have a tablet where you get a 20-minute run down time in your bedtime routine, you're actually sending a signal to your retina that it's daytime and you can push back your sleep onset by as much as one to two hours," said Hassinger.

Lack of sleep can lead to a whole host of issues.   

“Behavioral issues, school problems, ADHD, learning issues and speech delay — everything that I talked about because that's their brain is not getting the development that it needs to function for the next day," said Hassinger.

For adults, that can lead to mood swings, high blood pressure, wanting higher calorie foods, all things that impact your relationship with others. So count those sheep. 

“And then honestly, you're just a happier family," said Hassinger. "Then you have more fun, you eat better, you feel better, you're more active. It just ends up being dividends for everyone.”

If your child is having trouble staying asleep, Hassinger says it could be CPAP or sleep apnea. It is common and those can lead to all the issues addressed here.

When you are in REM sleep, Hassinger says the body is paralyzed as our brains can take all that energy to do what it needs to do. That means our airways become floppy. For kids, their muscles and their cartilage are not that strong until they hit puberty, which can cause breathing issues and it causes them to wake up.