DES MOINES, Iowa — With metro students less than a week away from the start of the new school year, doctors advise that the time is right now for students to start getting back into their school routines.

This includes things like decreasing their use of digital devices to mimic what a school day would feel like. This is because students will have less access to things like their cell phones while they’re in class, so scaling back on screen time by a little bit every day can help ease this transition.

This is the first school year where there is a cell phone ban across all Iowa schools after Governor Kim Reynolds signed a law restricting cell phone use in Iowa classrooms during instructional time last session. Local school boards adopted their own policies this summer.

Plus, students should start to regulate their sleep schedules now that school is under a week away. This can be done by having kids go to bed earlier every day and waking up earlier.

Dr. Christine Davis is a family medicine physician at UnityPoint Health’s Waukee Medical Park. She said that elementary-aged kids should get between eight and 12 hours of sleep every night, and teenagers should get eight hours. She recommends gradually moving a child’s bedtime slightly earlier every day, so the transition into the first day of school isn’t as drastic.

“Even moving bedtime back by like 15 minutes every night just to kind of slowly get them used to what it’s going to be like, kind of getting them up around the time they’re going to be going to school so that it’s not a big shock the first day,” she said.

Starting to scale back on screen time and adjusting sleep schedules can also help ease back-to-school anxiety by getting students into a routine.