Helping Teens Sleep Better

Toddlers shoot up during their second year. That rapid growth is fueled by two key inputs: food and sleep. When they’re hungry or tired, they get cranky. It works the same for teens. During their growth spurts, adolescents grow like toddlers. Not only do they go through the sexual changes of puberty, but they also increase muscle mass and lung capacity. My sons each grew six inches during their freshman year in high school. That takes a lot of food and a lot of sleep.

Adolescents need adequate sleep to maintain stable moods, support positive mental health, and focus in school. Sleep is also important in maintaining physical health—our bodies are better at fighting off disease when we’re well-rested.

How much sleep do teens need?

Almost no teens report being able to maintain optimal mood if they’ve had fewer than 7 hours of sleep. Although sleeping too much—more than 11 hours a night—is also associated with poor mood, adolescents experiencing poor mental health need more sleep than their peers.

Although parents often set teens’ bedtimes later than they do their younger children, they actually need more sleep, not less. The National Sleep Foundation recommends:

• 9 to 11 hours for 6- to 13-year-olds
• 8 to 10 hours for 14- to 17-year-olds
• 7 to 9 hours for 18- to 25-year-olds

This is tough. Elementary schools typically start later than middle or high schools. Both homework and extracurricular activities increase as children become teens, making teens' time tighter and pushing back bedtimes. Texting and social media are hard for parents to monitor and can stretch social time well into the night.

Bottom line: Teens need more sleep than adults. It’s hard for them to get it.

Sleeping Well 101

You probably know the basics of sleep hygiene:

The dos:

• Go to bed at a regular time and get up at a regular time. If you have to choose, the going to bed part is more important than getting up. We are creatures of habit—as it gets closer to bedtime, your brain will start telling you it’s time to sleep.
• Establish a routine. Shut down work. Walk the dog and tidy up your room. Read or listen to music. Have some decaffeinated tea or warm milk (really!). Consider showering before bed or a relaxing cleansing routine. Doing the same things at the same time tells your body that the next activity is relaxation and sleep.
• Make your bed a sanctuary. Use it to sleep. If you associate lying in bed with chatting, homework, and watching superhero movies, beds aren’t special. If you associate lying down in bed under the covers with lights out, relaxing, and calm, it will be much easier to go to sleep.
• Turn out the lights! Before I changed it, my room was atwinkle with chargers, and my phone and watch turned on every time I move them. Close your curtains to keep out traffic lights. Get some duct tape and cover the LEDs. Put your phone in sleep mode so it doesn’t ping with alerts or turn on when the cat jiggles the cord.

The don’ts

• Don’t exercise close to bedtime. That will hype you up, not quiet you down.
• Don’t play video games, watch horror movies, or get in fights before bedtime.
• Don’t sleep late on weekends. It doesn’t help and can make it harder to get to sleep during the week.
• Don’t drink coffee or eat large meals close to bedtime. Let your body relax; you don’t want it stimulated or working on digestion.
• Turn off screens before bed. The blue light from monitors and phones can keep you up. If you are going to be looking at the screen, turn on the night filters that change the color tone of your screen to yellow in the evening—it really helps.

How can parents help?

Like much of parenting teens, building successful sleep habits is a cooperative effort. Parents shape and educate, but it’s the teen who has to sleep. How can you accomplish this together?

• Problem solve. Establish reasonable goals for sleep—8 hours, for example. Work together to figure out how your child can accomplish that goal. Start with when they need to wake up and work backward. If they get up at 6 a.m., then you’re looking at 10 p.m. as the latest bedtime that can get you there. If they get up at 7 a.m., they can stay up later.
• Look for flexibility. One of my sons liked some quiet time before school to read and play video games when everyone else was asleep. He moved his shower time into the evening to build that time into his day. My other son squeezed jumping out of bed, getting dressed, and grabbing breakfast into a 20-minute dash to sleep as late as possible. Both got 8 hours. Other kids want to spend time choosing clothes, doing hair and makeup, and getting organized in the morning. Going to bed early is worth it to them. Different teens will make different choices. The bottom line is sleep—how are they going to solve that problem?
• Build in transition time. You can’t go from TikTok videos to sleep. A good parenting practice is to build in the transition time between when screens go off and sleep starts. My parents had a bedtime and a lights-out time, with reading in between. My own kids listened to books on tape when lights go out to help them transition. Other people pray, meditate, or use the time to journal and straighten up as a ritual before bed.
• Turn off the phone. Research has shown that the single largest interference with teens’ sleep is using screens at night. If you have one rule, that should be it. Teach them to program a sleep or unavailable or focus mode into their phone. If that isn’t working, buy an alarm clock, and leave the phone in the kitchen for the night.
• Be positive, not negative. Kids respond better to rewards than punishment. Talk about how much better they will feel with sleep, not how bad they feel without it. It’s more effective.

Helping your child sleep is one of the best things you can do to support their mental health, their school performance, and their happiness. It's worth thinking through how to make that happen.