The One Change To Make Before Schools Go Back

Bedtimes crumbled weeks ago, younger children are still awake late and teenagers are surfacing mid-morning, leaving many families on course for a jet-lagged first week back. For parents facing a first September school run, the reset window is already opening.

Mike Kocsis, hormone specialist and founder of Balance My Hormones, has spent more than 20 years in hormone health and says one change made around 10 days before term can spare the body clock an overnight jump. It is not a stricter bedtime.

“Move the wake-up time earlier by 10 to 15 minutes each day and get children into daylight soon after they wake,” Kocsis said. “Bedtime then starts to fix itself because you cannot argue a child’s body into feeling sleepy an hour early, but you can pull the whole clock earlier from the morning end.”

“Melatonin is the timing hormone, rising in the evening only when the body clock says night is coming, so sending a child to bed an hour early without moving that clock can mean an hour lying awake,” Kocsis said. “Morning light is the strongest lever the clock has, and a landmark human light study found that light in the first hours after waking pulls the rhythm earlier.”

“Research reviewed in Sleep Medicine found teenagers waking about 90 minutes later in the holidays than in term time, while nine to 12-year-olds were about an hour later,” he added. “Average September bedtimes were also about an hour and a half earlier than in August, which is the size of the jump families can create when they wait until the night before.”

Teenagers can have an extra biological hurdle during the reset. Kocsis said: “During puberty, the body clock can move as much as two hours later relative to childhood, so a teenager who cannot get up is not automatically lazy because their melatonin can genuinely be running on a later schedule.”

“That is exactly why a gradual morning shift works better than shouting up the stairs,” he added.

“Cortisol normally surges in the first 30 to 45 minutes after waking and helps boot the brain up for the day,” Kocsis said. “Forcing a sudden 90-minute shift on the first school morning creates the misalignment researchers call social jetlag, which hits teenagers and young adults hardest, so that first week can feel like long-haul jet lag because the body is dealing with the same kind of hormonal clock mismatch.”

Scottish pupils went back around 12 August, so parents there have just lived this reset. Families in England and Wales, where many schools return from 1 September, still have the full 10-day runway.

National Sleep Foundation guidance recommends moving bed and wake times by 10 to 15 minutes a day for about a week, with school-year preparation beginning up to two weeks ahead. Kocsis advises parents to lead from the morning, so for a 1 September return the first small shift lands on Saturday 22 August.

• Pick the exact school-day wake-up time and count backwards in 15-minute steps across 10 days.
• Wake children 10 to 15 minutes earlier each day. Do not force bedtime an hour earlier.
• Open the curtains straight away and have breakfast in daylight. Add a few minutes in the garden or a short walk if possible.
• Keep the last hour before bed dimmer and lower screen brightness, particularly on phones and tablets.
• Hold the new wake-up time at the weekend, because a long lie-in can pull the clock later again.

None of it costs anything. A whole-family breakfast or short morning walk can make the change feel like a routine rather than a punishment, while consistent weekend times stop a lie-in from undoing the week’s work.

Kocsis added: “One late night will not wreck anyone, because this is about the pattern. Melatonin tablets are prescription-only in the UK and are not the answer to this sort of holiday schedule reset.”

“The same morning rule can rescue adults from the September slump too,” he said. “If an adult fixes their mornings for a few weeks and is still waking exhausted, flat on energy and low in mood, they should speak to a qualified clinician and get their hormone levels properly checked rather than guessing.”

This article originally appeared on Your Coffee Break. Written by Martin Guttridge-Hewitt