A bedtime routine for 6 year olds

How much sleep a six year old needs

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus statement, published by Paruthi and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2016 and endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends 9 to 12 hours of sleep per 24 hours, including naps, for children aged 6 to 12. That is a wide range on purpose. The practical way to use it is to start from the morning. If your child has to be up at 6:45, then 9 hours of sleep points to a 9:45 bedtime and 12 hours points to 6:45 in the evening, so the useful question is which end of that range your particular child actually needs.

Many parents find the clue is in the morning rather than at bedtime. A child who is hard to wake, who falls apart over a sock, who fades in the late afternoon or who gets sillier and faster the more tired they are is often telling you that bedtime is 15 or 30 minutes too late. Try moving it earlier by 15 minutes and holding it there for a week before you judge. If your child is still wide awake an hour after lights out, that can mean the opposite: too early, or a last half hour that was too exciting.

If your child still naps, that nap counts toward the total for the 24 hours. If naps have stopped, all of the sleep has to happen at night, which is one reason bedtime matters more at six than it did at four. Keep the wake-up time roughly steady where you can, because a regular morning makes the evening easier to predict. Many families find a 30 minute weekend lie-in is fine and a two hour one makes Sunday night hard work.

A sample evening, from dinner to lights out

The same order every night matters more than the same clock times. Here is one version for a child who needs to be up at 6:45. At 5:45, dinner at the table with the big light on and screens away. At 6:15, plates cleared and the house slows down: shades drawn, overhead light off, lamp on. At 6:30, bath or a wash and teeth, with a five minute warning before the bath ends. At 6:50, pajamas on and tomorrow's clothes laid out on the chair. At 7:00, story time, first their page and then yours. At 7:25, a minute of talk about what was good today and what happens tomorrow. At 7:30, lights out, one song, one kiss, door at the same angle as every other night.

The transitions are where evenings wobble, so give warnings rather than instructions. "Two minutes and then the bath is finished" works better than "get out of the bath now", because it gives your child a moment to finish what they are doing. Use the same short phrases each night and let them do the narrating if they like. A six year old who gets to announce story time is often a six year old who moves. If something has to be dropped on a hard night, drop the bath, not the story and not the lights out time.

From the end of dinner to lights out, 45 to 60 minutes is plenty. Routines that stretch to two hours tend to fray, because there is more time to negotiate. If your child needs more sleep than this sample allows, move the whole sequence earlier rather than trimming the calm parts. And if dinner is at 7:00 because of work, run the same five steps in a shorter version rather than inventing a different evening.

What the bedtime story is doing at six

At six, the bedtime story is doing two jobs at once. It is the clearest signal that the day is closing, and it is reading practice that does not feel like practice. A calm bedtime story also does something harder to name: it slows the breathing, gives a busy mind somewhere to land, and turns the last ten minutes of the day into time with you rather than time being managed.

Try splitting it into two halves. First, your child reads to you while they are still fresh: one page, one paragraph, or the book from the reading folder. Keep it short and stop while it is still going well, because the aim is a child who finishes a page wanting more, not one who is corrected through three. Then you read, something slightly above what they can manage alone. A chapter book read one chapter a night works well at this age, and so do 10 minute bedtime stories for nights when everyone is tired. If you want a hand with choice, StoryChoose has free bedtime stories and can write personalised ones with your child's name and the things they love in them.

Offer two books rather than the whole shelf, and let your child choose. If reading aloud has become a battle at bedtime, move the practice to after school and keep bedtime stories purely yours to read. Bedtime is a bad place to fight about anything, and reading is easier to keep as a pleasure if it is not the thing that ends the day in tears. A story they have heard twenty times is still doing good work, so let them go back to favorites.

School nights: let the morning do half the work

The most useful thing you can do for a school night happens in the ten minutes before you go to bed yourself. Clothes out, shoes by the door, bag packed, water bottle filled, reading folder signed, and a note on the table if tomorrow needs one. A six year old can do two of those jobs with you. Every minute saved in the morning is a minute that does not come out of the evening's calm.

After school, aim for a snack and some outside time or running about before homework, especially if your child has been sitting still all day. A child who has not moved since lunch often finds it hard to lie still at 7:30. Homework straight after school works for some families and after dinner for others. What matters is that it finishes before the wind-down starts, so the last half hour can be slow.

If school worries surface at lights out, try giving your child a fixed time earlier in the evening to say them, in the bath or over dinner, and then at bedtime remind them gently: "We put the spelling worry in the box at dinner, remember what we decided?" Some children need to hear tomorrow's plan out loud, especially before a test or a change of routine. Name it in one sentence, calmly, then close the subject and return to the story.

After-school activities, late nights and busy homes

Swimming, soccer, a club that finishes at 6:30: some nights dinner is at 7:45 and there is nothing to be done about it. On those nights, protect the anchor rather than the whole routine. The last three steps, teeth, story and lights out, can happen in the same order even when they happen late. Pajamas before you leave, a story read on the sofa once you are home, and a calm voice are enough to keep the shape of the evening.

If children share a room, staggering bedtimes by 20 minutes can help, with the older child reading quietly while the younger one settles, or read to both together and let the younger one fall asleep first. Write your routine on a card, four steps only, and leave it where everyone can see it. That way a grandparent, a babysitter or a parent home late can run the same evening without a briefing, which matters in families with shift work or two homes.

Try not to make up for a late night with a very late morning, because the next evening gets harder. An earlier night the following day, even by 30 minutes, usually does more good. It often helps to keep lights low and voices low for the last half hour, whatever the clock says.

Common problems at six, and gentle fixes

The one more thing. Six year olds are excellent negotiators, and the requests arrive after you have said goodnight. Get ahead of it by giving one of each before they ask: one drink, one hug, one question, then the door closes. If your child needs a reason to stay in bed, a bedtime pass they can hand in once a night, for a trip to the toilet or one extra hug, is often enough.

Getting out of bed. Walk them back with as little talk as you can manage, using the same six words every time, "It is bedtime, back to bed", and keep your voice flat and kind. Long explanations at 8pm are interesting to a six year old, which is exactly the problem. The first few nights are usually the busiest. If your child is frightened rather than stalling, deal with the fear first.

Fear of the dark, monsters, bad dreams. Do not argue with the fear. Check the room together, under the bed and in the closet, then offer a tool: a small flashlight by the bed, a spray bottle of water labelled for monsters, a drawing of a brave animal taped to the wall. Then sit closer than usual for two or three nights and move a little further away each night.

Thirst, hunger and the last minute toilet trip. A drink and a trip to the toilet happen before teeth, not after. If your child did not eat much dinner, a plain snack at the table before the routine starts is better than a hungry child at 8pm. And if your six year old is suddenly sillier, faster and more argumentative than usual at bedtime, try 15 minutes earlier for a week, because overtired children often look wide awake.

When to bend the routine, and when to get help

Weekends, holidays, birthdays and travel are all good reasons to bend the routine, and a bent routine is not a broken one. It often helps to go back to the usual order on the first night home rather than waiting for Monday, and to use the same calm voice you use on a school night. Children cope well with "tonight is different" as long as it is said out loud and the next night is ordinary again.

If bedtime has become hard every night for several weeks, if your child is regularly awake for long stretches, if they seem anxious about sleep or if mornings are consistently difficult, it is worth talking to your child's doctor. That is not a sign that the routine has failed. It simply means you want another pair of eyes on something that is not shifting with the usual gentle fixes. In the meantime, keep the routine going, keep it short, and keep the story, because the predictability is doing more for your child than you can see from the outside.