Why Your Sleepy Teen Isn't as Lazy as You Think
Sleeping longer is a biological necessity not a sign of idleness
Sleep — or the lack of it — is a serious problem for many new parents. Babies might go to bed early, but this doesn’t mean they sleep for reasonable stretches of time.
If your baby is awake, so are you. You dream of the days when you can get an unbroken night’s sleep. You might even yearn for your child’s teenage years when they want to sleep as much as you do.
Be careful what you wish for.
As your child reaches their teen years, they become sleep zombies. They can stay in bed — in a deep sleep — for what feels like days. Some days you’ll even creep into their room to check they’re still breathing, just like you did when they were a newborn who slept for more than an hour at a stretch.
Funnily, you don’t always feel relieved when they hit this stage. Many parents grumble that their kids are plain lazy and stay in bed for no good reason. They nag, they moan and maybe even resent how much time their child spends in bed in an away-with-the-sleep-fairies state.
I’ve been there. The amount of time my son wanted to sleep when he was a teenager baffled me.
Getting him up in time to get to school was a battle nearly every day; I crashed around the house at weekends to try to wake him up before the sun went down. I sometimes even cooked him his favourite breakfast — a bacon sandwich — in the knowledge the smell would wake him up. He’d come downstairs, eat the sandwich and then go back to bed.
I didn’t know this would turn into a colour-me-bad guilt trip later. Turns out, he wasn’t just being lazy. His sleeping habits were based on biological need. There are valid scientific reasons why teens sleep so much.
Teenagers need sleep to develop
During their teenage years, children go through major developmental stages. For example, they might have physical growth spurts, and their brains mature (even if you’re not sure this is actually working that well).
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, extra sleep supports these changes, and teens need between 9 to 9½ hours of sleep a night to compensate for physical changes and brains that are still baking in the developmental oven.
But, the gap between the sleep they need and the sleep they seem to get can be mahoosive. You might not understand why they sleep for more time than scientists say they need to. However, this is often down to them not actually getting enough sleep on a regular basis (even though they seem to spend their lives in bed).
Teenagers find it hard to get the sleep they need
If you know that your teenager needs a certain amount of sleep a night, you might encourage them to go to bed early enough to get in enough hours. So, if they need 9 hours sleep a night and have to get up at 7am for school, you can tuck them in at 10pm.
Job done. Not.
Good luck getting a teenager to go to bed early just because you say they should. Plus, even if they do, this won’t necessarily work. You might feel that your teenager spends more than enough time in bed, but they might not get the sleep they need for various reasons.
Sleep cycles: Teenagers have a different sleep cycle than adults — their circadian rhythm changes at this time. Their hormones make them want to go to sleep later at night and wake up later in the day. So, you can stuff them in bed for an early night but they won’t necessarily be tired enough to fall asleep in time to get the hours they need. This also explains their need to talk to you for hours late at night when all YOU want to do is sleep.
Daily life stresses: Teen lives are more stressful than we sometimes realise. They have early starts in the week and their days are often long. They might have busy after-school/weekend schedules, part-time jobs, lots of homework and social lives that take up their downtime, leaving them wired-up at bedtime. Anxiety about school, friendships, relationships, and their move into the adult world can make them anxious. Buzzing brains, worry and stress are not the friends of sleep.
Late-night socialising: One of the biggest bugbears for parents I know is screen time at bedtime. If a teenager can’t sleep, they might start scrolling through their social media accounts. Their friends are also often online at this time, so they have in-bed social chats and meet-ups. This activity does not help them get to sleep or get the quality of sleep they need. According to the BBC, every extra hour of screen time at this time equates to a 63% increased risk of insomnia and 24 minutes less sleep.
So, what can you do?
Lots of parents take the sleep-as-a-battle approach with their teenagers. I was guilty of this sometimes. But, knowing what you know now, you should try to work with your teen to help them get the sleep they need rather than getting frustrated by the time they spend in bed.
These tips might help:
Be kind — It’s easy to get angry with your teenager for sleeping too much or to poke fun at them. Cut them some slack. Think about how you feel when you don’t get enough sleep. You don’t function well. They’re no different.
Let them catch up — A teenager with a sleep deficit can’t power on forever. Eventually, they need to catch-up. This is most obvious at weekends and on holidays when they top up their sleep hours. If you don’t have a valid reason to get them out of bed, leave them be when you think they are too tired to function.
Be realistic — While you can take your foot off the ‘get-your-lazy-bum-out-of-bed’ pedal, this doesn’t mean your teenager has a licence to sleep their lives away. There will be times when they are lazy or use this scientific argument as an excuse not to do stuff. Sometimes, you need them to get up and get on with life even if they are tired. There is no reason why you can’t explain that sometimes they just have to get out of bed.
Give them agency — You can give your child advice on how to get enough sleep (good luck with that one). It’s easier to get expert help— show them online articles from reputable sites and/or encourage them to research teenage sleep problems. Despite their half-baked brains, most teenagers will accept a scientific argument they found themselves. My son read an article once on why using your phone in bed was a bad idea. He started to read books in bed instead. He fell asleep more quickly and slept better. The fact that I had told him to try that multiple times isn’t frustrating at all (it so is).
Get help if you need it — Sometimes, a sleep problem can be a sign of a physical or mental health problem. If your child is always tired/wants to sleep all the time, has really bad insomnia, or you’re simply worried about them, then it does no harm to have your doctor check them out.
So, next time your teenager’s sleep hibernations drive you crazy, take a deep breath. Knowing that this might have a biological basis will lower your fume temperature.
Who knows — a more relaxed approach could even improve your relationship with them. Less nagging means less friction at home. Plus, if they get enough sleep, they might even turn from their current surly state to that daisy-fresh cheerful child you knew before their hormones went haywire.
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I love how you wrote this out Carol. It makes so much sense
I knew this, too, Carol, even though I think my daughter used to milk it! 🤭 She whinges now how she wishes she could go back and blah blah blah Ahh, the irony. What goes around 😆