What time do your kids go to bed?

My kids are aged 13, 9, and 3. Although my older kids sleep on their own, we make sure that they are already tucked in bed before 9 pm during school days and this became a habit ever since they started kindergarten. On weekends and holidays, we allow them to sleep late as long as they can get up to do what is needed to do the following day. We still

My 3-year-old does not have a fixed schedule of sleeping yet. Sometimes, she sleeps at 9 pm or latest 10 pm depending on her day's activities which can tire her and make her fall asleep easily. But, we are now preparing her to sleep in her bedroom with her sister, so that means, she also needs to be in bed before 9 pm.
A sleeping schedule is an important part of our routine and discipline. It is very rare that my kids don’t follow the schedule and that is only if necessary.

Sleep is so important for physical and mental health. I can understand that scheduling sleep time can become tricky when you have a large family.
We were 4 siblings and I remember when we were kids we had a family rule of all lights down at 10 pm. With the passage of time, early bed time became a habit. As we grew older we would only stay up longer at night for studying or completing a college assignment.
I have kept the same routine for my kids. On week days it is around 10 pm. and we all get up around 6 am. So, with this routine kids can have a good 7 – 8 hours of sleep. On weekends we can sleep longer in the morning so we try to plan watching a movie together or going out for dinner.
My kids are a bit older now but over the years their sleep routine has not really changed a lot. They prefer getting up earlier to do their assignments or chores rather than sleeping late. This has worked really well for us.
I am firmly believe that “Early to bed, Early to rise, Makes you healthy, wealthy and wise” 

My 1-year-old goes to bed right at 7. She won't let us push it a minute longer! Afer that, we work on the big kids (5 and 7). They are usually in their beds by 8pm. The last time change really got to my kids though. They are struggling with their wake up time in the morning.

We're about to start sports again soon which will disrupt our schedule. I find faith in the fact their bedtime routine is pretty simple and works, so sometimes if the time is off by a little bit, we don't stress too much.

I think it depends on the child and the amount of sleep they need. After tracking patterns of sleep, some of my friends’ kids only need 10hrs total sleep including naps in a 24hr period while my daughter seems to need 11-12hrs. We set bedtime at 8pm for her, a toddler, but she just will not fall asleep until sometimes 9pm waking without fail at 6.30am. Then a 1-1.5hr day nap. Even when bedtime is made earlier, and naps are shortened, 6.30am is the wake time. So to reduce all of our stress, we just follow her body’s lead for a full night’s sleep.

I have always found it easier to work backwards when it comes to setting bedtimes. By this, I mean that I take into account our morning schedule and my kid's morning personalities and work from there. Most paediatric sleep guidelines recommend "sleep per 24 hours" and so if your child is having naps during the day that will also influence how many hours of night time sleep they need.

My son was an early bird right up until the onset of puberty. You could rely on him to be up and about by 5:30am every morning no matter what. When he was a kindergartener and in early elementary school, he needed a solid 10 hours of night time sleep to prevent day time tiredness and so it was light's out no later than 7:30pm. We implemented a 30 minute wind down that started at 07:00pm during which time he would get ready for bed and have story time before light's out. On weekends, he would occasionally be allowed to stay up a bit later, especially if we were out or had guests, but the shorter sleep time invariably led to him being grumpy by early afternoon the following day.

My daughter was slightly older and we applied the same rules to her, although she often struggled to fall asleep and so her night time sleep hours were shorter. When she was in Kindergarten this could easily be solved by an afternoon nap, but this wasn't always possible as she got older. Once she was in middle school, light's out moved to 8.00pm, but I encouraged her to get into bed at the same time as her brother and read or listen to calming music. This helped her sleep routine and seemed to address the problem of struggling to fall asleep.

In high school, my kids had a set bedtime of 9:00pm on school nights (except on nights with school events) with an additional 30 minutes of reading time permitted once they reached 10th grade. With a 06:30am start on school days, I could be assured that they would at least meet the minimal sleep requirements for their growing bodies. While I became more flexible about weekend and holiday bed times once they were older, in my experience late nights and weekend lie in's can be very disruptive to the normal sleep cycle.