Sleepy teens, how do you deal with that?

[Kathie in VA]

My oldest is 14yrs old and getting her up in the morning is such an effort! Now if we had to get out somewhere, like for an early morning soccer game, or morning class, etc then she'd get up. Otherwise it's sometimes easier to let her sleep than to deal with her falling back to sleep on and off all morning, kwim? I'm thinking of signing her up for two outside classes next year but both are later in the day :glare:. She does stay up late, but getting her to bed early doesn't help as she can't fall asleep till late anyway, she's a night owl. She says she better off if she falls asleep around 2am and getting up at 6am (but I don't think she lasts too many days this way, she tends to want a catch up day of sleep). Now I can let her sleep in as a benefit of homeschooling but how can she get a full day of 'school work' done in a day that starts around 11am?? Aside from finding ... something... to get up early for, any ideas?

[Garga]

This question comes up every few months on this board. You might want to see if you can search for similar threads. People have lots of differing opinions on this topic.

[Laurie4b]

Teens biological clocks do run that way. I remember trying to hold my eyes open with my fingers in my 8:00 math class senior year of high school. The local school system here has accomodated this by not starting homeroom until 8:45.

 

I think 11:00 is probably too much slack, but 9:00 may be a good goal to shoot for. One thing that helps "reset" the wake up times is to go outside for 15 min immediately upon wakening at the earlier hour (on days when the sun is out.) If you have a deck and can eat breakfast on the deck, that can be a good alternative. My sons will get up for good food!

[momof2boys]

Well to be honest I have never found a trick for getting my son up early. He is 17 now and is also a night owl. Just this past night he satyed up until 4 am reading. He usually gets up anywhere from 11:00-12:00 everyday. It used to bother me but I have learned that he is not a morning person and to make him get up early only defeats the purpose of getting school done in a timely manner. If I let him get up when he is ready then he has a much better attitude and will make good progress with school. yes it takes him until whenever to get school done but that is okay.( trust me it has taken me a long time to get to this point). He will be a senior this school year. What will he do when he starts college and then eventually a job...well I am not sure at this point but I am sure we will work through that also. I tend to think that as he gets older and more mature he will eventually figure it out. I know my husband says he was the same way as a teenager and now he gets up by 5 am to get ready for work and goes to bed at a decent hour. Now my youngest is 15 and going into the 10th grade. He is an early riser and always starts school by 7-8 Am. Although since we are on our summer break he ahs been staying up late and playing xbox live with some friends and tends to get up later.

So I guess what I am trying to say is don't sweat the small stuff. Compared to some of the people we know and the problems they have with their children we will take this anyday.

HTH

Gloria

P.S. All my homeschool friends children stay up late and sleep late also for what it is worth.:001_smile:

[Nan in Mass]

We temporarily solved the problem by flying him to Europe for a few weeks LOL. When he came back, his clock was reset. It is slowly slipping back, though, despite our efforts.

 

We take advantage of the switch off daylight savings time.

We let him sleep really late weekends to catch up.

We try to limit computer time before bed. The times when I've insisted he climb into bed with a book half an hour before I want him to go to sleep, he usually has been able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, but if I let him play on the computer, he can't go to sleep when he climbs into bed. We try not to let him stay up too late on the weekends because that contributes to reseting his internal clock later and later.

We start waking him an hour before he has to start school and then keep rewaking him (being his snooze alarm) until he has to get up. In our tiny house, this isn't a bother.

We make him get up and read and drink a cup of cocoa 15 minutes before school starts.

We have a morning break later when he eats breakfast, since he can't eat when he first wakes up and it seems silly to wake him very early just to eat.

 

Letting him sleep later won't work for us because he has gymnastics practice in the early evening and he needs some time to play before that. If he wants any free time, he has to start school at 7. Left to his own devices, he'd sleep from 11 until 10. I think I would be reluctant to let him do that, anyway, just because for the rest of his life he is probably going to have to get up early and go to work. I think some things are easier if you have just always had to do them. I happily abandon lots of public school practices, but abandoning this one didn't seem like a good idea. As a parent, I'm trying to teach good work habits.

 

-Nan

[MomsintheGarden]

Hi Kathie,

 

We had a similar issue with our 16yo dd. She slowly slipped into staying up and getting up later. We had to get her to reset her internal clock because the rest of the family (8 of us) all got up early, and it just wasn't practical to have one person on a very different schedule. She also wasn't as efficient with her schoolwork, so that fed into the problem.

 

It took some time of forcing herself to go to bed by 9 PM (she worked down to it), and getting up earlier, but it eventually worked.

 

I also had her start taking blackstrap molasses (1 Tbsp./day at breakfast) to make sure she had enough iron, and she eliminated eating sugar after lunchtime. She says it is MUCH harder for her to get to sleep at night if she's had sugar in the afternoon. She does not drink any caffeine (she never has). She tries to make sure she gets some exercise every day, which helps, too.

 

On the other hand, if your daughter goes away to college, she will already be on the same schedule as almost all the other students! Ds had a hard time dealing with his late-nighter (or all-nighter :glare:) roommate. Most college students have the schedule you describe for your daughter. Ds is more of a morning person, and took a lot of 8 AM and 9 AM classes.

 

HTH,

GardenMom

[kjdkek]

My son, who is almost 13, has a lot of problems falling asleep. He has since he was very small. I can get him up early (8:00 is early for him) when he has stayed up nearly all night and he will still have trouble falling asleep that night. He can lay in bed for hours and not fall asleep. I can put him to bed at 10:00 and check on him at 3:00 and he will still be laying there, wide awake. He gets so frustrated because he would like to sleep, he just can't. This has always thrown off our school schedule because I let him sleep in. My husband doesn't like the fact that I let him sleep in but he does need sleep. Glad to see that I am not the only one who lets their child sleep in.

 

Erin

[Susan C.]

Same thing going on over here. But, I've found if teens sleep in, then of course, they can't go to bed early (not even 12 hours after they wake up). They will both get up for food, haha. My son in mid high school put himself on an early am, bed around 10 schedule. My daughter has been a sleep nightmare since in womb..... but the best solution is to make sure she doesn't sleep too late and gets plenty of activity during the day. At 15, she has started to set an alarm to get up around 9, and likes that (she has friends that stay up all night during the summer and get up at 3-4pm). Most/all of her friends are on facebook at 1am through the entire year..... I guess their parents are in bed?? I don't go to bed until everyone is "tucked in." Both of my teens are horrible grouches if they oversleep! I do let them rest if really tired, and get them up if just being lazy :)

[jayfromcleveland]

A friend of mine (who is a public school teacher) says its physically normal for teens to want to stay up late and sleep late. Something to do with their hormonal state or some such thing. Anyway, I have a 15yo that fills the bill and I was that way myself as a teen -- none of which makes it any less annoying!

[nchser]

I grew up in a home where my dad would wake us at 7:00 am without fail. We had to be downstairs by 7:30 or else. When I grew up and moved away to college, I fell into the sleep late stay up late habit. When it came time to hold down a regular job, I got up as needed, and was always at work on time. When I took an evening shift job I had no problem sleeping till 10-11am, going to bed well after midnight.

My point is, no matter what sleep habits are formed as a young child, those are easily changed as needed when they become adults. It is probably more important to teach them the importance of being responsible in the workplace or at home or where ever they find themselves. Sleeping when they are supposed to be at work or at an appointment is unacceptable. It is more of a character issue IMO.

That said, I can really relate to some posts here, and I struggle with letting dd fall into her own shedule of late to sleep, late to rise. I guess finding a happy medium somewhere is a good place to be. I know we could never start school at 7am, but I'm not willing to let her sleep till 10 every day either.

And I agree with Susan C. Once my kids sleep till 11 am, I can't expect them to go to be 12 hours later.

Also, I agree on the Facebook/IM stuff - no way do I let them continue that late into the evening. My kids may not like it, but 9pm is the cut off, after that if they want ot stay up late it is reading or quiet activity.

[dalynnrmc]

Our day, as a family, is like this. On purpose. School starts at 1pm and runs until about 6pm. (My kids are 10yo and younger.) If I had a teen, I'd probably send them back to school stuff when dh leaves for work, around 10pm.

 

Anyway. We are night owls here too. It's weird, but it's fine. It works. ;)

[Lori D.]

What helps somewhat with our night owl:

 

1. Lots of physical exertion / exercise during the day to physically tire him out so his *body* will want to rest at night. Swimming laps seems to work the best here, but a good aerobic sporting event / practice, or even brisk bicycling, rollerblading, dance pad game, or walking for a solid 45-60 minutes a day will work.

 

2. NO computer or TV screens for at least 1 hour, preferably 2 hours before bedtime. Especially computer monitors -- the screen redraw cycles too fast for our eyes to register, but it literally triggers a parallel response in the brain, exciting the brain and making it next to impossible for the brain to settle down immediately; it can take up to several hours for the brain to calm down.

 

3. Learn some deep breathing and relaxation techniques; about half an hour before bedtime, spend 10 minutes putting them into effect.

 

 

BEST of luck! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[AnitaMcC]

14 yr old son is an early bird... he just can not sleep past sunrise. About 3 years ago he started struggling with going to sleep. Most of the time it helps when he reads until he falls asleep. He goes 3-4 days with only about 5-6 hours of sleep. But when he gets tired enough then he makes up that lost sleep and sleeps about 10-11 hours straight. I hear that wacky sleep cyle is common in Asperger/autistic kids. And he takes meds each night for his allergies/asthma but those don't seem to knock him out.

 

14 yr old daughter has always been a night owl. It was not fun when they were babies-LOL. Ds would go to sleep around 8pm and wake around 5am... Dd would go to sleep around 11pm and wake around 9am. Anyway, Dd still struggles to go to sleep before 11pm. It was horrible the last three years for middle school because she had to leave the house at 7am. She never got enough sleep during the week. She always had to make it up on the weekends. She also struggles staying asleep. She wakes up in middle of the night and just can't fall back to sleep. For about a year now she has been taking melatonin and that seems to help some. She avoids caffeine and sugar after about 3pm.

 

But in our house Dh and I do not encourage staying up past midnight nor sleeping past 9 am. Partly because those who want to sleep till noon, they get mad at anyone making noise that wakes them up. And I refuse to do my house cleaning at the convenience of others nor force younger kids to be quiet after 9am.

 

During school year the younger two have to get up at 7:30am and leave for school at 8:40am. I figure with the twins homeschooling.. they can sleep until 8:30am if they want. It should keep the fighting down-LOL. But school nights (even though they are homeschooling) they still have to be in bed by midnight. The younger two kids are in bed by 9pm.

[PollyOR]

My 13yo dd has always been a late sleeper, but it became a huge problem the past couple of years. She was going to bed around 10-11 p.m. and spent her time "day dreaming" until she went to sleep around 1 a.m. She would drag out of bed around noon. She was finally awake by the time I was ready to wind down with school. Schedule wise it was frustrating!

 

Her psychologist felt she was getting too much sleep which was contributing to her depression. Finally, I decided to do something about it. Even though I'm a night owl myself, I now get up every morning by 8 a.m. and awaken dd to take her morning meds. DD was NOT happy in the beginning, but she is beginning to see the benefits (ex: she has more time during the day to do what she wants to).

 

In the fall she will have to be awake by 5:45 a.m. at the latest to attend a class. Neither one of us is looking forward to getting up that early. I'm sure this is what we'll look like in the morning. :ack2:

[Peela]

My dd15 would prefer to get up late. It doesnt work for me, and no, she wouldn't get her work done- which wouldn't bother her! She has afternoon classes, and work sometimes, so she cant just take all day. And, I am not available all day either.

So, my teens get up at 7am rain hail or shine, and no matter their bodyclock or hormones, because that's the only way it works here. The consequence for not getting up on time is not being allowed to have a morning shower. Thats a fate worse than death for my daughter, so it's a good motivation!.

She also wasnt getting enough exercise. The chiropractor told her she needs to walk 30 minutes a day, minimum. So she has to do that in the morning before school, too. However I have noticed- and so has she- that that walk changes her whole day, and she feels much better for it. It wakes her up better than caffeine or a shower. Both of which she has as well!

 

She sleeps in on Saturdays, and on holidays.

 

As for geting enough sleep, my kids have to be in their bedrooms by 9pm- not just for them, but for me too. I cant make them go to sleep then, but I think it helps. If they are tired, they go to sleep.

 

Yes, I have noticed their body clocks change. I have noticed my son's change in the last months, and he would prefer to sleep in. They both still need almost 10 hours sleep a night at least several nights a week.

 

I imagine as parents our approach to this issue varies depending on our own attitude to sleeping in. I am a little unsympathetic, as I had to get up early when I was a kid, to catch the bus and trains to school. It became a lifelong pattern, and I go to bed early and rise early- before everyone else. And I love it. I feel the day is wasted if we dont get started early. I see what I am doing with my kids- and my husband is even stronger on this than me- is starting them on good life habits. They may stray from them, but we see it as important to set a good foundation.

[Linda in NM]

I'm with you, Peela, as my son sleeps in (until 8:30!) this morning after a late hockey practice. Our problem is that his exercise tends to come fairly late at night, so he needs to find a way to calm down enough to get to sleep by 11:00 p.m. or so...then, I have no issues whatsoever waking him at 7:00 a.m., since I've already been working for an hour by then. The joys of online work!