August 1, 2025 • 7 mins
School starts in Florida the week of August 11th. But if you have school aged children or teens, the time to get their body clocks back on track is right now. We speak with Dr. Luis Ortiz, a sleep specialist at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, about how to fight summer sleep patterns, games, phones and other distractions to get your kids back on time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird here Beyond the News. We're continuing our series
of interviews for back to school, and of course one
of the issues for parents and families and kids is
getting back on a regular sleep schedule after the summer break.
Maybe things were, you know, the clock, the timing changed
a little bit, people sleeping in more so, how to
get your family members, how to get your kids back
(00:22):
on a regular schedule. We've got doctor Luis Ortotis with us.
He is with Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Saint
Petersburg and he's a pediatric sleep medicine specialist, Doctor Ortist.
Welcome to Beyond the News.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Thank you so much for having me here.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
All right, So, what are the issues that you tend
to see with back to school and really changing and
getting back to that regular routine that maybe is maybe
the hours a little bit different than what they are
in this summer.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, so oftentimes I see that the typical bedtime routines
and schedules that parents, you know, are very confident about
keeping in place during a school year, all of a
sudden evaporate during the summer, and the child's sleep schedule
also changes and mutates into some weird schedule where they
(01:13):
might be staying up until two, three, four am and
not waking up until the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Obviously, that's not conducive for.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Going to get into school on time, and it's a
lot of times we have to do a lot of
like education and kind of planning on what how to
get them back on track. A lot of the times
is it can be due to not having a set
routine or schedule beyond just having a strict deadtime. A
lot of our circadian rhythms are based not just on
(01:44):
light exposure, but our day to day routines like what
time we eat breakfast, lunch, other social cues. And without
those day to day routines that we typically have during
the school year, we see a lot of children that
their sleep schedule just up gets.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Wild, and maybe in the summer, things like phones and
games and things like that maybe helping to push things
a little later.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Definitely electronics, social media, they're well designed to.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Keep you engaged and kind of convince yourself that I
can stay up a little bit longer, I can stay
I can play a little bit longer, and I'll be okay.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
But you're not really okay because you're.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Ending up waking up at noon one, two pm, and
that's going to be a lot harder to get back
to where you were before.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
And you mentioned sir Katie and rhythms. I suspect a
lot of this plays in, especially when you talk about
the older age groups in terms of the whole debate
about what time of day school should start, and there
was an attempt to try to adjust, particularly high school,
and that sort of got pushed back over the last
couple of years because of the difficulty of logistics. How
(02:54):
does that play into all this?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
That's right, So through an adolescent children want to start
to go to sleep later and wake up later. It's
it's a biologically ingrained thing about the human brain.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
It starts doing puberty and it goes back once you're
like reach like final brain maturity around their early to
mid twenties. And so what you'll see is, you know,
like a ten year old kid, they might be okay
with going to bed at eight thirty or nine o'clock,
but then a few years later they're, you know, twelve
thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Now they really.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Want to go to sleep ten or eleven o'clock at night.
As they get a little bit older, they may want
to even go go to bed even later, with their
sweet spot for going to sleep being midnight and the
wake up time the sweet spot being around nine o'clock. Obviously,
that kind of conflicts with current schools start times. Unfortunately,
a lot of research shows that students learn better when
(03:54):
their education starts at a later time. They're less prone
to having actions in driving, so we're talking about older teenagers.
And also there's less sports injuries when their sports activities
occur at a later time instead of like either early
in the morning or in the evening.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So what is the advice that you're giving parents about
what tips can you offer to get kids back on
schedule and on a routine with the new school year.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So I recommend start now, and the first thing you
want to do is figure out what the ideal schedule
is going to be when school starts. Ideally, you want
to figure out what time the child needs to wake
up in order to get to school on time, and
then count backwards how many hours they need to sleep.
And that can be tricky because a lot of people
don't understand don't know that children typically tend to sleep
(04:47):
a lot more than adults. So even teenagers, they typically
on average, need about nine hours of sleep at night,
compared to seven to eight hours in adults younger children
so typically between a just like nine through twelve, they
may need ten hours, and younger children may need even more.
And I feel that a lot of parents tend to
(05:08):
underestimate that. So once you identify how many hours of
sleep they need, count backwards and then that's the time
that they actually need to be asleep. You want to
add a buffer time for them to be able to
wind down, relax in bed, and be able to fall asleep,
and then you want to start incorporate. And then you've
got to figure out what their routine is going to be.
Are they going to brushing their teeth, are they're taking
(05:30):
in bath? Are they getting things ready for the next day.
I feel that incorporating these like pre bedtime rituals or
routines before they go to bed can help get the
child ready to wind down, be relaxed and go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
How do you place the I guess the sleep hygiene
as far as devices and things like that. You put
in a time out for devices you know turn them
off by this time. What are some of the measures
you recommend?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
So you have to understand that nowadays, with children and
adolescents social media electronics, it's a it's a core component
of their social life, and it's gonna be a lot
harder to remove the electronics at a certain time than
compared to like ten years ago. And so you gotta
depending on the age. So younger kids definitely, you know,
(06:23):
I would definitely say, you know, you don't have anyone
like there's no big social circle or big you know,
it's not gonna be the end of the world if
we take out take away your tablet and phone an
hour before bedtime, And that's the ideally, that's what I
would recommend for anyone to just put away the electronics
and spend the rest of the hour getting ready for
bed and winding down. But with older children and teenagers
(06:45):
that can be problematic because you know, their social lives
can be very entwined with that device, and so I
just recommend at least if you can't commit to stopping
it an hour before bedtime, then at the very least
it needs to be a hard star up at bedtime.
When you're in bead, the electronics are off, no and
(07:05):
nothing more afterwards, And I typically kind of talk with
my teenagers about the you know, the not the dangers,
but the lore of social media in short form media
like you know, TikTok or Instagram stories. You know, these
algorithms they learn about you, they learn about what you're
(07:25):
gonna love, and so it's gonna give you another video
that it knows that you're gonna.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Want to watch. And you can tell yourself that you're.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Just gonna watch one or two videos, but then it's like,
oh wait, I already saw that one or that one
wasn't good, and before you know it, you've already lost
one hour of time.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
That you could have spent sleeping and feeling better the
next day.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Doctor Louis Ortiz, Pediatric sleep that is in specialist with
Johns Hopkins Old Children's Hospital, thank you very much for
joining us on Beyond the News.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Thanks for having me
Gordon Bird here Beyond the News. We're continuing our series
of interviews for back to school, and of course one
of the issues for parents and families and kids is
getting back on a regular sleep schedule after the summer break.
Maybe things were, you know, the clock, the timing changed
a little bit, people sleeping in more so, how to
get your family members, how to get your kids back
(00:22):
on a regular schedule. We've got doctor Luis Ortotis with us.
He is with Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Saint
Petersburg and he's a pediatric sleep medicine specialist, Doctor Ortist.
Welcome to Beyond the News.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Thank you so much for having me here.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
All right, So, what are the issues that you tend
to see with back to school and really changing and
getting back to that regular routine that maybe is maybe
the hours a little bit different than what they are
in this summer.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, so oftentimes I see that the typical bedtime routines
and schedules that parents, you know, are very confident about
keeping in place during a school year, all of a
sudden evaporate during the summer, and the child's sleep schedule
also changes and mutates into some weird schedule where they
(01:13):
might be staying up until two, three, four am and
not waking up until the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Obviously, that's not conducive for.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Going to get into school on time, and it's a
lot of times we have to do a lot of
like education and kind of planning on what how to
get them back on track. A lot of the times
is it can be due to not having a set
routine or schedule beyond just having a strict deadtime. A
lot of our circadian rhythms are based not just on
(01:44):
light exposure, but our day to day routines like what
time we eat breakfast, lunch, other social cues. And without
those day to day routines that we typically have during
the school year, we see a lot of children that
their sleep schedule just up gets.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Wild, and maybe in the summer, things like phones and
games and things like that maybe helping to push things
a little later.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Definitely electronics, social media, they're well designed to.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Keep you engaged and kind of convince yourself that I
can stay up a little bit longer, I can stay
I can play a little bit longer, and I'll be okay.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
But you're not really okay because you're.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Ending up waking up at noon one, two pm, and
that's going to be a lot harder to get back
to where you were before.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
And you mentioned sir Katie and rhythms. I suspect a
lot of this plays in, especially when you talk about
the older age groups in terms of the whole debate
about what time of day school should start, and there
was an attempt to try to adjust, particularly high school,
and that sort of got pushed back over the last
couple of years because of the difficulty of logistics. How
(02:54):
does that play into all this?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
That's right, So through an adolescent children want to start
to go to sleep later and wake up later. It's
it's a biologically ingrained thing about the human brain.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
It starts doing puberty and it goes back once you're
like reach like final brain maturity around their early to
mid twenties. And so what you'll see is, you know,
like a ten year old kid, they might be okay
with going to bed at eight thirty or nine o'clock,
but then a few years later they're, you know, twelve
thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Now they really.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Want to go to sleep ten or eleven o'clock at night.
As they get a little bit older, they may want
to even go go to bed even later, with their
sweet spot for going to sleep being midnight and the
wake up time the sweet spot being around nine o'clock. Obviously,
that kind of conflicts with current schools start times. Unfortunately,
a lot of research shows that students learn better when
(03:54):
their education starts at a later time. They're less prone
to having actions in driving, so we're talking about older teenagers.
And also there's less sports injuries when their sports activities
occur at a later time instead of like either early
in the morning or in the evening.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So what is the advice that you're giving parents about
what tips can you offer to get kids back on
schedule and on a routine with the new school year.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So I recommend start now, and the first thing you
want to do is figure out what the ideal schedule
is going to be when school starts. Ideally, you want
to figure out what time the child needs to wake
up in order to get to school on time, and
then count backwards how many hours they need to sleep.
And that can be tricky because a lot of people
don't understand don't know that children typically tend to sleep
(04:47):
a lot more than adults. So even teenagers, they typically
on average, need about nine hours of sleep at night,
compared to seven to eight hours in adults younger children
so typically between a just like nine through twelve, they
may need ten hours, and younger children may need even more.
And I feel that a lot of parents tend to
(05:08):
underestimate that. So once you identify how many hours of
sleep they need, count backwards and then that's the time
that they actually need to be asleep. You want to
add a buffer time for them to be able to
wind down, relax in bed, and be able to fall asleep,
and then you want to start incorporate. And then you've
got to figure out what their routine is going to be.
Are they going to brushing their teeth, are they're taking
(05:30):
in bath? Are they getting things ready for the next day.
I feel that incorporating these like pre bedtime rituals or
routines before they go to bed can help get the
child ready to wind down, be relaxed and go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
How do you place the I guess the sleep hygiene
as far as devices and things like that. You put
in a time out for devices you know turn them
off by this time. What are some of the measures
you recommend?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
So you have to understand that nowadays, with children and
adolescents social media electronics, it's a it's a core component
of their social life, and it's gonna be a lot
harder to remove the electronics at a certain time than
compared to like ten years ago. And so you gotta
depending on the age. So younger kids definitely, you know,
(06:23):
I would definitely say, you know, you don't have anyone
like there's no big social circle or big you know,
it's not gonna be the end of the world if
we take out take away your tablet and phone an
hour before bedtime, And that's the ideally, that's what I
would recommend for anyone to just put away the electronics
and spend the rest of the hour getting ready for
bed and winding down. But with older children and teenagers
(06:45):
that can be problematic because you know, their social lives
can be very entwined with that device, and so I
just recommend at least if you can't commit to stopping
it an hour before bedtime, then at the very least
it needs to be a hard star up at bedtime.
When you're in bead, the electronics are off, no and
(07:05):
nothing more afterwards, And I typically kind of talk with
my teenagers about the you know, the not the dangers,
but the lore of social media in short form media
like you know, TikTok or Instagram stories. You know, these
algorithms they learn about you, they learn about what you're
(07:25):
gonna love, and so it's gonna give you another video
that it knows that you're gonna.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Want to watch. And you can tell yourself that you're.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Just gonna watch one or two videos, but then it's like,
oh wait, I already saw that one or that one
wasn't good, and before you know it, you've already lost
one hour of time.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
That you could have spent sleeping and feeling better the
next day.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Doctor Louis Ortiz, Pediatric sleep that is in specialist with
Johns Hopkins Old Children's Hospital, thank you very much for
joining us on Beyond the News.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Thanks for having me
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