Time and time again, sleep is cited as a major factor in health, wellness, performance, and overall success. Getting consistent sleep helps us feel better and perform at our best. However, getting enough sleep is a constant struggle for teenagers. Many teens are going to bed far too late, only to be woken up early for school the next day, resulting in a groggy, sluggish performance. Lack of sleep hugely impacts one’s ability to focus, as well as other Executive Functions. When teens already struggle with Executive Functioning, adding poor sleep habits on top of this struggle can make school and success feel impossible. Read below for some tips on helping your teen get enough sleep.
The CDC recommends that teens get an average of 8-10 hours of sleep per night. While that might seem high, sleep is crucial for recharging and refueling our bodies. Teens are experiencing rapid growth and change, both physically and mentally, meaning their brains and bodies need significant time to recover and prepare for the next day. Despite this recommendation, the CDC also reports that 7 out of 10 U.S. teens aren’t getting the recommended amount of sleep. There are a lot of reasons for this discrepancy, but it mostly comes down to two things: schedules and habits.
Teens’ biological clocks naturally cause them to want to stay up later and get up later. However, school schedules often dictate students get up earlier than their bodies would prefer. When teens are involved with sports, activities, and after school jobs, they might find themselves staying up later to have enough time for all of their required activities and homework. It can be difficult to make time for all of the requirements in a day, and the sacrifice usually becomes sleep. Additionally, many teens do not have good habits around bedtime. Their natural inclination is to stay up later, so even when their required tasks are done, many teens spend hours at night engaging in hobbies, chatting with friends, or scrolling through their phones. This urge is a difficult one to fight, but often results in teens staying up too late and feeling tired the next day.
Most of us do not have the power to change the schedule of our teens’ schools, or the general schedule on which the world operates. For this reason, getting up earlier than teens would like is an unfortunate given. With this requirement in mind, the task becomes getting teens to bed and asleep early enough to achieve the optimal amount of sleep. The tips listed below are some great ways to get started.
The environment in which we sleep has a huge impact on our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. The general recommendation for an optimal sleeping environment is cold, dark, and quiet. Turning the heat down at night, or the AC up in the summer, can be very helpful for sleep, as can running a fan in the bedroom. Try to make the room as dark as possible, covering small lights from items like laptops or power strips and turning hallway lights off. Strive to keep the environment as quiet as possible. Avoid loud TVs or music if you are staying up while your child is in bed. Try to eliminate items that might make noise such as a ticking clock. Eliminating noises also helps destimulate the mind, allowing it to transition into rest mode more easily. When your child’s bedroom is as cold, dark, and quiet as possible, they will be much more likely to fall asleep quickly.
One factor that often makes it very difficult for teens (and adults) to fall asleep is when their bedroom or bed is a multi-use space. When we spend a lot of time in our bedrooms, it is more difficult to signal to our brains that this space is one for rest and for sleep. For this reason, using a bedroom for sleep only is an extremely helpful way to help teens fall asleep more easily. However, using the bedroom just for sleep isn’t always possible. Teens often crave their own space and want to use their bedroom for recreational time and for studying. In this case, the best option is to designate the bed as a sleep-only space.
Acquire a chair, couch, desk, or combination of these that allows your child to spend time in their room without sitting on their bed. When they sit or lay on their bed when engaging in stimulating activities, it becomes more difficult for their brains to distinguish that this is a space for rest and for sleep. Encourage your child to use their bed only for sleep and use other spaces in their room (even the floor) for other activities. Creating this distinction in how each space is used will help signal to their brain when getting into bed that it is time for sleep, making it easier to fall asleep more quickly.
Exposure to light is a major contributor in staying awake. For this reason, a great way to help your teen fall asleep earlier and more easily is to make the house darker as it becomes later in the evening. This recommendation does not mean you must shut off all lights. However, try to avoid overhead lights in favor of lamps or even candles. Consider turning off some of the lights in spaces with multiple switches. When you darken your house an hour or so before bedtime, it helps signal to your brain that it’s time to start winding down. By the time your teen goes to bed, their body will have a much easier transition into sleep.
Developing consistent habits around sleep is the best way to allow your body to easily fall asleep and feel rested when you wake up. Although our schedules will not always allow us to follow regular sleep and wake times with 100% consistency, being consistent most of the time is a great goal to strive for. Consider the time your child needs to wake up in the morning, which is likely dictated by their school start time and the time it takes to get to school. Count backwards from 9-10 hours and consider that time their target bedtime. Once established, support your teen in getting to bed around the same time every night. Having consistency in this habit is better than going to bed extremely early on specific nights because it will help the brain anticipate sleep at a specific time, allowing your teen to fall asleep more easily. Over time, building this consistent habit will cause your teen to feel tired when it is approaching their regular bedtime and they will eventually want (and even need) to go to bed at that time.
Much like the above tip, the more signals we can send to our brain that it’s time for sleep, the easier it will be to fall asleep. Developing a regular bedtime routine is a great way to send these signals to our brains. It is not overly important what this routine includes, but it should be activities that prepare your teen for bed and get into a restful state. It might include having a cup of tea an hour before bedtime, then taking a shower, reading for 15 minutes, then getting into bed. It might be as simple as washing their face, changing into pajamas, and getting into bed. What is important about the routine is that it is the same every night, because this consistency is what will prepare the brain for sleep. When your child engages in a consistent bedtime routine, they will have an easier time falling asleep when they get into bed.
Using technology with screens like TV, phones, laptops, and ipads makes it more difficult for us to go to sleep. One major reason for this is that the blue light from screens blocks our body’s ability to produce melatonin, the hormone that makes us sleepy. Blue light from screens interferes with our eyes taking in all of the color spectrum, which interferes with our natural circadian rhythm, making us unnaturally awake. In addition to the issues with blue light, using technology at night is often quite stimulating, whether teens are riveted by a TV show, hyper engaged in a video game, or having a compelling conversation with a friend. Scrolling social media or messaging with others can also lead to conflicts or consuming upsetting information before bed, which can make sleep more difficult. In the hour or so before bedtime, our goal should be to go into a restful state and avoid over stimulating activities. Limiting technology use in the hour before bedtime is a great way to help your body rest and prepare your brain for sleep.
Cell phones are arguably the biggest detractor from teens’ optimal sleep. Having a cell phone by their bed or under their pillow makes it nearly impossible to resist checking it if they are having trouble falling asleep. Once they check their phone, they are exposing their eyes to blue light and their brain to stimulation, making it more difficult to fall asleep. The easiest way to combat this temptation is to have their cell phone out of reach at bedtime. This does not necessarily mean that their phone must be in a different room, although it could be helpful. Simply charging their phone on the other side of the room, so that it is out of reach when they are in bed, is sufficient to quell the temptation of checking the phone late at night or when they have trouble falling asleep.
Although this action can be frustrating and challenging for teens, it will ultimately benefit their sleep and they will adjust over time. If they use their cell phone as an alarm to get up in the morning, it also has the added benefit of taking away their ability to snooze, supporting regular wake times and ensuring that they don’t oversleep.
There are many screen-free activities that can help transition the brain into a restful state such as reading, drawing, or coloring. However, if your teen struggles with racing thoughts before bed, journaling is a great solution that will both help their brain transition into a more restful state and help them work through some of their racing thoughts. Writing down everything they’re thinking and feeling before bed allows them to empty their mind of these thoughts. When they don’t write them down, it becomes easy to fixate on various thoughts and to accidentally spend hours thinking about various worries, or even just interesting ideas. A regular journaling routine is a great way to ensure that your teen works through these thoughts before bed without losing them, while transitioning their brain to a more restful state.
The above tips are quite practical, actionable things that teens can do, and that parents can support their teens in doing, to improve their sleep. However, there is also a broader approach that is important, which is to truly view sleep as a priority. When we have a lot to do, sleep is usually the first thing we’ll sacrifice, seeing task completion as more important than resting and recharging our bodies. Shifting this mindset to viewing sleep as as important as task completion is essential in helping teens get enough sleep. This shift involves parent modeling as well as discussing with your child the importance of sleep, and why choosing sleep over other tasks is ultimately helpful for them. It is a difficult shift, as it might sometimes result in skipping an activity or canceling on a commitment. However, understanding that health and wellness is essential to performing our best and that sleep is essential to health and wellness will help you and your teen evaluate their priorities and learn to prioritize sleep more.
Building habits is a long, challenging process, and teenagers, particularly those who struggle with Executive Functioning, often need a lot of support. A caring parent can go a long way, but sometimes it’s necessary to call in a professional. YA Success Coach offers personalized support for teenagers in building habits that will improve their lives. We focus particularly on organization, time management, and goal-setting, developing systems that are uniquely supportive to your child’s specific needs and providing them with the individualized support they need to help them stick to these systems. Contact us today to learn more about how success coaching can help your teen.
Having a conversation is the first step to helping your child realize their full potential and set them up for success!