Cover
Story
By Martha Wegner
Turn Off Your
iPod and
Go to Bed!
In this final installment of a three-part
series on children and sleep, Martha Wegner
discusses adolescence and the sleep
issues that arise in that age group.
Just when I thought I was nearing the end of my parenting sleep phase [the number of hours in a 24-hour period devoted
challenges, along came my daughter’s adolescence; a whole to sleeping] that encourage teenagers to stay up late and
new challenge unto itself filled with questions about sex, drugs, consequently oversleep. Further complicating the matter,
curfew, college entrance, and, well, the list goes on. But who teenagers don’t like to be told what to do, and many parents,
could have anticipated this challenge: sleep. We’ve trained these respecting their children’s urge toward independence, tend to
kids for sleep since they were babies! But something happened hold back advice for fear of being accused of nagging.” Because
to my daughter’s ability to enter peaceful slumber as she of this delayed sleep phase, adolescents sleep less than
entered her teenage years. Every night was a battle to get her to they need to on weeknights, and then try to make up for it
go to bed. She had to listen to her iPod. She needed to solve the on weekends.
latest problem with her friend via text messaging. When we told
her “lights out”, she whined and procrastinated. The mornings? How did this happen? –
Don’t even get me started on the mornings, because I sure AAP places the blame for this common sleep phase shift on
couldn’t get my daughter started in the morning. World War III 2 culprits: first, the hormonal surges of puberty that reset the
could not have gotten Allison started in the morning. adolescent body clock in such a way that youngsters may not
I wondered, just how many times can a person hit the snooze only feel sleepy progressively later, but may also be inclined to
button? And every morning she was late as she grabbed her wake later. Second, teenagers are much more likely to take part
toast and ran to the bus stop. I pleaded with her (over and over), in social activities in the evening, some as structured as athletic
“Why don’t you go to bed earlier so that you can wake up earlier or play practice, some unstructured, but stimulating
and so that you are not nodding off in class?” nonetheless, such as time spent on the internet chatting and
texting back and forth to friends. Many teenagers hold down a
It turns out that Allison is not alone. According to the part time job in addition to their studies and social life.
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)’s book, Guide to Your
Child’s Sleep: birth through adolescence (Villard, 1999), although Why does it matter? –
most teenagers need between 9 and 10 hours a sleep a night, Other than the fact that I was yelling at my daughter at the
they get on average closer to 7 hours. Many teenagers end of the day and at the start of every morning, and this put us
experience what the AAP calls “delayed sleep phase syndrome”: all in a very bad mood, what does it matter? Hold on to your hat,
“Biological changes during puberty bring about shifts in the the findings are astounding.
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