Why the schedule matters more than the hour count
Without a sourced government figure for minimum nightly rest, the useful standard is consistency rather than a target number. A helper who goes to bed and wakes at roughly the same time each day recovers better than one who sleeps a full night occasionally but is woken erratically the rest of the week. If your household's evenings are unpredictable, the fix is usually building in a buffer before her agreed bedtime, not shortening the sleep window itself.
Talk through this with her directly rather than assuming a workable arrangement from her room setup alone. Ask what time she actually falls asleep and whether anything in the current routine, a TV in a shared space, a sibling's late homework, children who wander in, already disrupts it before you introduce a fixed schedule.
What counts as an interruption
A short request feels minor in the moment, but a pattern of them after bedtime is what actually damages rest: being asked to warm a bottle, fetch something from downstairs, or resettle a child once she is asleep, night after night, keeps her from getting a full uninterrupted cycle even if no single night looks bad on its own. Decide in advance, as a household, which situations truly can't wait until morning and which only feel urgent at 11pm.
If a newborn or a household member's medical needs mean night waking is realistically unavoidable, say so plainly during hiring or in an early conversation rather than letting it surface as a surprise once she has settled in. An honest scope discussion up front is fairer than an unstated expectation she discovers later.
- Agree a bedtime and treat it as fixed, not a rough guideline.
- Reserve after-bedtime requests for real emergencies only.
- Name any realistic night-waking need (a newborn, an ill family member) up front, during hiring, not after.
Where this fits with her room and her rest day
This page is not about the physical space she sleeps in, a separate question covered in the guide on her room setup, and it is not about her statutory weekly rest day under the Employment Act, covered in the dedicated guide on that entitlement. Both matter, but neither one by itself protects her nightly sleep: a private, well-set-up room still leaves her sleep-deprived if she is regularly woken from it, and a weekly day off does not compensate for six broken nights.
Treat nightly rest as its own household commitment, something you decide and hold to as a family, the same way you would decide meal times or a school pickup schedule, rather than something that takes care of itself once the room and the weekly day off are sorted.