Sleep and Your Teen
As my son gets older, I have noticed that his sleep habits and needs are changing. How much sleep does your teen get a night? Do you have a set bedtime requirement each night or does your child go to sleep when tired?
While we were on Spring Break, he must have been banking his sleep. It was not unusual for him to sleep past 10 am if I let him. He didn’t really go to bed much later than normal.
Now that we are back into the school routine I have noticed that his sleep pattern is very disrupted. I heard him up extremely early this morning – like 4 am. He shuffled around for a few minutes and then went back to bed. He got up again around 6. He came into the living room, turned on the t.v. and went right back to sleep. I had a really rough time getting him to get up and out the door at 7:45.
Something tells me that if he was sleeping straight through in a larger block of time, he would feel much more rested.
Give me some insights please! How much sleep is your teen getting? What can I do to ensure a better sleep for him? Do I need to set a time that he must remain in bed until?
As a parent, I’ve always been protective of my kids’ sleep because I think it’s so important. As I tell them, sleep is necessity, it is not a luxury. It’s like food and drink. I don’t want them to skip meals or miss sleep.
Tired or not, mine head up the stairs between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. seven days a week, unless there’s a very special event going on. No sleepovers except for close friends’ birthdays.
They get up between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. every day, even on weekends. I don’t generally ever have a problem getting them up in the morning and they never fall asleep during the day, even on long car rides.