When Being Tired Starts to Affect Learning: What We Should Know About Children, Sleep and International Education

“They’re just tired.”

It is something many parents and teachers say when a child is struggling to concentrate, becoming more emotional, forgetting things, or falling behind at school. But new international research suggests that we may need to take tiredness much more seriously.

A 2026 study by Kjeldsen, Rutkowski and Rutkowski examined data from more than 39 educational systems and found a striking increase in tiredness among fourth-grade students worldwide. Between 2016 and 2023, the likelihood of children reporting that they felt tired every day increased by 75%.

More importantly, tiredness was not simply an issue of feeling less energetic. Children who reported being tired every day consistently performed less well in reading, mathematics and science. Even after taking factors such as age, sex and socioeconomic background into account, daily tiredness was associated with performance approximately 20–30% of a standard deviation lower than that of their peers — a difference the researchers describe as comparable to several months of learning.

These findings raise an important question for parents and schools:

Could some children who appear to be struggling academically actually be struggling because they are chronically tired?

Sleep is part of learning

We often think about learning as something that happens when a child is sitting at a desk: listening to a teacher, reading a book, practising mathematics or completing homework.

But learning does not stop when the school day ends.

Sleep plays an important role in children's attention, memory, emotional regulation and ability to process and consolidate new information. A child who is consistently sleep-deprived may therefore arrive at school with fewer cognitive resources available for learning.

This can create a frustrating cycle:

Poor sleep → reduced concentration → more mistakes → greater effort required → frustration → more homework or studying → later bedtime → poorer sleep.

Over time, a child may begin to look as though they are simply "falling behind," when tiredness is actually contributing to the problem.

The 2026 study is particularly important because it suggests that this is not a small or isolated issue. Children's tiredness has increased substantially across educational systems, and the relationship between tiredness and achievement appears consistently across different countries and subjects.

What does this mean for children in international education?

The findings are especially relevant when we think about children attending international schools in the Netherlands.

International education can offer wonderful opportunities. Children may learn in multilingual environments, develop intercultural competence, move between educational systems and build friendships with peers from many different backgrounds.

At the same time, international education can come with additional demands and transitions.

For some children, the school day is only one part of a much larger cognitive and social workload.

A longer day than we realise

An international-school child may need to:

• learn and communicate in more than one language;

• adjust to different cultural expectations;

• navigate an internationally diverse peer group;

• move between different curricula or educational approaches;

• travel relatively long distances to school;

• participate in extracurricular activities;

• manage substantial homework or assessment demands;

• and, for some families, regularly adapt to travel, relocation or changes in family circumstances.

None of these things is necessarily problematic. In fact, many children thrive in international environments.

But the cumulative load matters.

A child who spends a significant part of the day processing information in a language that is not their strongest language, for example, may need more mental effort than a monolingual peer completing the same task. This does not mean multilingual children learn less efficiently — multilingualism can be a significant strength — but the overall cognitive and linguistic demands of a particular school environment are worth considering.

By the end of the day, some children may simply have fewer resources left.

The Dutch context: later bedtimes can be easy to overlook

There is another factor that is particularly relevant for families living in the Netherlands:

school schedules and travel time.

Many international families live some distance from their child's school. A child may need to leave home early in the morning to travel to school, while after-school activities, sports or homework can push the evening later.

For older children and teenagers, this can become even more challenging. Their biological sleep rhythms naturally shift during adolescence, making it harder for many teenagers to fall asleep early. At the same time, school schedules often continue to require early mornings.

The result can be a significant mismatch between when a young person is biologically ready to sleep and when they need to wake up for school.

Add homework, extracurricular activities, social media, gaming and evening family routines, and it is easy to see how sleep can gradually become the first thing to be sacrificed.

"But my child gets enough sleep"

This is an important question.

Parents sometimes understandably respond, "But my child is in bed for nine hours."

Time in bed, however, is not necessarily the same as sufficient or restorative sleep.

Children may have difficulty falling asleep, wake during the night, wake very early, or have inconsistent sleep schedules. Screens, stress, anxiety, late activities and irregular weekend schedules can also interfere with sleep.

And sometimes the signs are surprisingly subtle.

A tired child does not always look sleepy.

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Instead, they may become:

• irritable or easily frustrated;

• unusually emotional;

• restless or "hyperactive";

• forgetful;

• slow to get started;

• less motivated;

• easily distracted;

• more dependent on adults;

• resistant to homework;

• or simply "not themselves."

In some children, tiredness can actually look like attention difficulties or behavioural problems.

This is particularly important when a child is being considered for additional educational support or assessment. Before concluding that a child is unable to concentrate, remember instructions or complete work independently, it is worth asking a basic question:

Are they getting enough sleep to be able to do these things consistently?

When "falling behind" isn't simply an academic problem

One of the most important messages from this research is that tiredness should not automatically be treated as an individual child's failure to manage their time.

The researchers describe tiredness as a structural constraint on learning. In other words, this is not simply about telling children to "go to bed earlier."

School start times, homework expectations, socioeconomic circumstances, commuting, family routines and broader educational demands can all influence how much sleep a child gets.

This matters because the response to tiredness needs to extend beyond the child.

For schools, this may mean thinking carefully about homework loads, assessment schedules, start times and the cumulative demands placed on students.

For parents, it may mean looking beyond a child's grades and asking whether their daily schedule is realistically allowing enough time for sleep, recovery and downtime.

And for professionals, it means considering sleep as part of the broader picture when evaluating children's learning, attention, behaviour and emotional functioning.

What can parents do?

There is no single solution, and families differ enormously. However, a few questions can be useful:

1. Look at the whole week.

Don't just consider bedtime.

How early does your child need to wake up?

How long is the journey to school?

What happens after school?

How much homework and extracurricular activity is there?

2. Look for patterns rather than isolated nights.

An occasional late night is unlikely to explain persistent difficulties. Consistent tiredness across weeks or months deserves more attention.

3. Pay attention to behaviour.

If your child is increasingly irritable, forgetful, emotional, unmotivated or unable to concentrate, consider whether tiredness could be contributing.

4. Protect downtime.

Children need time when they are not learning, performing, travelling or completing activities. Recovery is not wasted time.

5. Be cautious about interpreting academic difficulties too quickly.

A child who is struggling with reading, mathematics, concentration or organisation may need academic support — but it is worth considering the broader picture, including sleep.

6. Talk to the school.

If your child's tiredness is persistent and appears to be affecting their learning, wellbeing or functioning, a conversation with the teacher or school support team can be helpful.

Sleep is not a luxury

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this research is that sleep should not be viewed as something children do after everything else has been completed.

Sleep is part of the foundation that makes learning possible.

When children are already managing the demands of an international and often multilingual educational environment, protecting that foundation becomes even more important.

The new research does not suggest that every child who is tired will fall behind academically, nor does it mean that sleep explains every learning or concentration difficulty. What it does show is that persistent tiredness is common, has increased substantially, and is meaningfully associated with academic performance.

So when we ask, "Why is my child struggling?", it may be worth adding one more question:

"How tired are they?"

Sometimes, supporting a child's learning starts not with another worksheet, tutor or intervention — but with making sure they have enough opportunity to rest, recover and sleep.

At Baumgarten Child Psychology and More, we look at children's difficulties within the context of the whole child — including their learning environment, development, emotional wellbeing and daily demands. For children in international education, understanding the interaction between these factors can be particularly important when deciding what support is needed.