What time should an 11 year old go to bed?
Last reviewed: 14 September 2026
Starting secondary school usually moves the alarm 20 to 30 minutes earlier, just as the body clock is moving the other way.
Between 7:45 PM and 9:15 PM
Most 11-year-olds should be asleep between 7:45 PM and 9:15 PM. For the 6:45 AM wake-up that a secondary school or middle school commute often demands, aim for lights out at about 8:30 PM, giving around 10 hours.
Eleven-year-olds still need 9 to 12 hours a night. The squeeze at this age is not that the requirement drops — it does not — but that the morning gets earlier and the evening gets later at the same time.
Bedtime chart for an 11-year-old
Find the time your child has to be up, and read across. These bedtimes are lights out, not the start of the evening — they already include about 15 minutes to fall asleep, which is a typical figure at this age.
| Wake-up time | For 10½ hours’ sleep | For 9 hours’ sleep |
|---|---|---|
| 6:00 AM | 7:15 PM | 8:45 PM |
| 6:30 AM | 7:45 PM | 9:15 PM |
| 7:00 AM | 8:15 PM | 9:45 PM |
| 7:15 AM | 8:30 PM | 10:00 PM |
| 7:30 AM | 8:45 PM | 10:15 PM |
| 8:00 AM | 9:15 PM | 10:45 PM |
If your 11-year-old wakes on their own at roughly the right time and is cheerful for the first twenty minutes of the day, the bedtime you are using is working. If they need waking every morning, it is too late — whatever the chart says.
How much sleep does an 11-year-old need?
An 11-year-old needs 9 to 12 hours of sleep a night. The major guidelines agree closely, and all of them give a range rather than a number because healthy children genuinely vary by an hour or more either side.
| Source | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| American Academy of Sleep Medicine | 9-12 hours per 24 hours |
| National Sleep Foundation | 9-11 hours |
| The Sleep Charity (UK) | 10-11 hours |
Ranges are guidance; your child is the evidence. An 11-year-old getting enough sleep wakes without being called, is reasonably civil before breakfast, and does not need a long lie-in at weekends to function. If all three are true, you have the right bedtime.
Starting secondary school pulls the morning earlier
Secondary school — middle school in the US — typically starts at a similar time to primary, but the journey is longer — a bus, a train, or a walk that used to take five minutes and now takes twenty-five. For a lot of families that alone moves the alarm from 7:15 AM to 6:45 AM, which is 30 minutes taken off the end of the night with nothing added back at the start.
If your child is starting secondary school in September, the fortnight before is worth using: shift bedtime and wake-up 10 minutes earlier every two or three days until you reach the new time. The body clock moves at roughly that rate. Arriving at the first day having already made the shift is the difference between a tired first week and a miserable first half-term.
Homework arrives properly
That first secondary-school year is usually the first with homework most nights, and the first year a child is expected to manage their own deadlines. The failure mode is predictable: homework left until after dinner, finished at 9:30 PM, and a brain that is now wide awake. A fixed homework slot that ends at least an hour before lights out is worth more to sleep than any amount of evening routine.
This is also the age where a phone usually arrives. The overnight-charging-outside-the-bedroom rule is far easier to set on day one than to introduce six months later.
Signs an 11-year-old is not getting enough sleep
Tiredness in children rarely looks like tiredness. It is far more likely to arrive as behaviour, and the timing is the giveaway — it clusters in the late afternoon and gets worse as the school week goes on.
- takes an hour or more to fall asleep
- impossible to wake, or wakes then falls back asleep
- a sharp change in mood or motivation during the first term of secondary school
- sleeping until midday at weekends
Snoring every night, long pauses in breathing, or persistent mouth-breathing during sleep are different — those are worth raising with your GP rather than treating as a bedtime problem.
A bedtime routine that works at eleven
The routine shrinks at eleven but the boundaries matter more. A screens-off time an hour before lights out, a homework cut-off, a consistent wake-up seven days a week, and a bedroom that does not have a phone in it overnight will do more than any wind-down ritual.
Give the lights-out time a reason rather than an authority: show them what time they have to be up and what ten hours back from that looks like. Eleven-year-olds respond much better to arithmetic than to instruction.
How to move bedtime earlier without a fight
- Fix the wake-up time first. Same time every day, weekends included, for a week. A stable morning anchors the body clock far more effectively than a stable bedtime does.
- Move in 15-minute steps. Shift lights out 15 minutes earlier every three or four nights. The body clock will follow that; it will fight an hour.
- Get daylight into the morning. Curtains open on waking, and ten to fifteen minutes outside before school if you can manage it.
- End screens before the wind-down starts, not as part of it — stopping something engaging is itself stimulating.
- Give it a fortnight. Two or three nights tells you nothing. Judge it by how the mornings look after two weeks.
Where these figures come from. Sleep duration recommendations are taken from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s consensus statement on sleep for healthy children, the National Sleep Foundation’s duration recommendations, and UK guidance from The Sleep Charity. This page is general wellbeing information, not medical advice — speak to your GP or doctor (or health visitor in the UK) about persistent sleep problems.
Common questions
How much sleep does an 11 year old need?
9 to 12 hours a night per the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, or 9 to 11 per the National Sleep Foundation. Around 9½ to 10½ hours is realistic for most 11-year-olds on a school night.
What time should 11 year olds go to bed?
Between 7:45 PM and 9:15 PM depending on the morning. With the earlier wake-up that the move to secondary school often brings, 8:30 PM lights out for a 6:45 AM start.
Is 10pm too late for an 11 year old?
Yes, on a school night — with a 6:45 AM wake-up that is under 9 hours, below the recommended minimum. It is a common bedtime at this age, which is precisely why so many children are exhausted a few weeks into their first secondary-school term.
My 11 year old can't get to sleep before 10pm. Is that normal?
It is very common, and it reflects the real shift in the body clock that starts around this age. Morning daylight, a fixed wake-up time including weekends, and getting screens out of the last hour are the things that move it back. If they are still awake past 11:00 PM most nights despite all that, it is worth speaking to your GP.