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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now my kids are on holiday. One is away with her girlfriend, having the time of her life, and the other initially came away with me and five of her friends. Now it's just me, my husband and her, which is a curious change of dynamic. But what's interesting is that while her friends were here, they all wanted to go out until midnight curfew, then they managed to get up reasonably early the next morning because, well, they didn't want to miss out on activities and time spent together. Now her friends have gone, and my daughter's sleep routine has slipped completely, and she's waking up later and later. I wanted to talk about this because a lone mum came onto our Facebook group stressed and looking for support, because three weeks into the summer holiday, her teen son is sleeping in sometimes until four in the afternoon. So this is a reminder for all of us that our teen isn't broken, it's normal behavior. And here are some tips I'm using. I'll follow up this monolog with an entertaining old discussion between Susie and me about whether we should let our teen sleep in. But first, here's my approach, rather than try to shame my daughter for her behavior and force her to get up. I've decided to empathize and help her to understand what's going on, and here's why.
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Firstly, I know transitions are hard for everyone. Going from full steam at school to having nothing scheduled is utterly disorienting. Even an adult would struggle when our usual routine goes out of the window.
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Our brain has to do the difficult job of deciding what to do, and what I've learned from cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham in his book why students don't like school.
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We're actually not very good at thinking. We think we are, but we're not. Our brain is designed not to think too much because it's a huge draw on resources.
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If you've listened to my episode on routine, you'll know how important routine can be. One of my teens has realized she feels depressed if she doesn't have structure to her day and life.
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The other is much happier lounging around doing nothing.
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So it's not about my parenting, it's the person. So we parents can help our teens by planning ahead and booking things so they do have some structure during the holiday, but that's not always easy or possible or even preferable. I booked a debate camp for my daughter. It's been canceled. Our teens lives are so heavily structured that I think there can be massive benefits in using their intense self interest to help them learn about themselves. So another thing we parents can do is to help them figure out what genuinely interests and motivates them, then set goals for summer with them and help them to set up a routine that works on those goals, because we are what we do each day. Now this is the approach I've taken.
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If the goals are their own, our teens will be much more motivated, and they're also more likely to hear your words as encouragement rather than nagging. The reasoning behind helping them design their own routine is that I know some young adults really struggle with the transition from the structure of education to living an independent adult life, starting now to help our teens understand how to map up their own ambitions and structure the environment around them will help them to build those skills for when they really need them later on. Importantly, Tech is a major factor to consider. I already have screen time limits in place for my teens, but keeping tech out of their room at least close to bedtime is well, it's harder during the holidays, they want to stay up chatting with friends or watching things into the early hours. So I have to keep going back into why it's important for their sleep and their personal development. And it is happening. My daughter is taking on board what I've been saying.
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I think society can make us feel that academics are everything, but there are other incredibly important skills that our teens need to build. It's easy to underestimate the benefits of social, time together with their friends, and also time we spend having fun together. So I've tried to organize events where we get other teens from the area around so that we can have fun together. And Mealtimes are still sacrosanct. Cards are brilliant. We've been playing Sust and uno as a family and laughing a lot. Another thing I've been working on is life skills. I know my teens need to be able to do certain things well when they leave home, and I've talked to them about that, rather than just talking about them doing chores in the home, I take one thing a week and only focus on that. So this week, it's been clothes washing. I explained it in terms of their independence. I'm making sure she knows all the tricks like sorting colors and fabrics, what the dosage should be, ways of hanging clothes up that make ironing easier, etc, etc. Take a list of things they need to do well to be a functioning adult and work on one a week. Talk to them in terms of how. It's going to help their life in the future, rather than forcing them to do something around the house. I've also told my daughter she needs to exercise every day. I don't care what it is it needs to happen when I get home, I'm planning to get her working in the local charity shop so she can get some proper experience of a working environment that isn't school or home. Finally, one super useful thing we can do is to help our teens discover how much sleep they actually need, rather than talking about when she should get up. I've been using this holiday to help my teen measure her natural sleep needs. She's discovered she needs 10 hours, which is on the long side, knowing this will help her to manage herself when term time starts again. That's more than enough from me. Here's the old episode on letting our teens sleep in, and now for our question, which comes from Simon, who says sleep seems to have become a big issue in our house. Should I let my teenager sleep in at the weekend or keep them to a regular schedule? Both the National Sleep Foundation and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine agree that teens need between eight and 10 hours of sleep per night, and surveys indicate that many parents don't realize their children are having sleep problems. Parents I speak to go, yeah, like, I'd like enough sleep. Yeah, exactly. What about me?
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I think sleep is like a national thing that we're not very good
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at. Yeah, I think that's right. You just sleeps a wimps, yeah, I can sleep when you die.
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Oh yeah, there's still that. People still believe that. Don't it. It will crawl through the day and and yet,
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I saw a really good piece, and I've completely forgotten who it was, where he said, If you could take a pill and it would make you perform better academically, it would give you way more energy, it would make you far more emotionally stable and far more fun, and you wouldn't overeat.
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Would you take the pill and everyone goes, yeah. And he said, That's what sleep does, and it's free, and there are no side effects.
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Wow, amazing. So how come we are so rubbish? Myself included organizing that. But for teenagers, the question being, should they sleep in the weekend? I mean, I for all of this, I'm just saying my experience, yeah, that's
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what the teachers say. But I mentioned it to where she went, Yeah, like,
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and I think, you know, it's still historically, you know, we when we were teenagers, which was a long time ago, you know, try and get the teenagers up, and it was seen as a bad thing to let your teen sleep in. And I think we know for sure now that that's no rubbish. They need to sleep long, and their circadian rhythm changes and all of that, but it's quite hard to manage. I mean, my especially with, you know, the gaming and stuff, and they maybe sleep in all weekend, and then they're not tired Sunday night, and then, like now, that's
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a very important point, because I used to present as I was a world news anchor for CNBC, and my shift started at three o'clock in the morning. Lucky me, and that was really hard, because it was five days a week, and then I'd get to Friday exhausted, but that would be my night to go out. So you know, I just carry on and then, and I'd feel really like I was spaced out all weekend, but I just keep going, because this is my weekend, and my one time to have fun. And then come Sunday, I couldn't sleep and but there was also the excitement and anxiety that I had to perform the next day. So you get this building pressure. And I'm sure a lot of teenagers will feel like this, that this, there's this, you're sort of a bit zombie, weird, over excited at the weekend, or you're sleeping in, and then you're kind of Crossing time zones all the time, yeah, which is very difficult. But is there a right right answer? Not really.
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I don't know. I mean, kids are different as well, aren't they? I mean, and the weekdays, then it's not expecting that they're going to be bouncing out of bed because they are groggy. The important
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thing we should mention is that in all the research, it says that the melatonin in a teenager slips so when it kicks in is later than when they're a young child or as an adult, and it then stays in place longer in the morning. So when your teenager is expected to get up and go to school early, don't be surprised if they are very annoyed about it or just not really capable to make a sentence four o'clock in the morning to them, it's too, way too early. There
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is a country, and I'm not sure if it's Sweden, it could be where they have done studies, where they start teenagers coming to school, they start at 10 o'clock in the morning, and everything is much better. But obviously the teenagers, I want to start at 10
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in the morning too. That's really good. You know? But obviously,
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you know, the structure of society means that that's really, really difficult to manage. Yes,
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I remember my step daughters at that time, we used to get the mobile phone bills, and they would list every single text I'd look at this bill that was, I don't know, 2030, Ages long with text messages all the way through the night, you know, two, three in the morning. And whenever they'd come to stay, they would be sleeping until one in the afternoon at the weekend, and my other kids would go, when are they getting? Ah, teenagers.
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It's teenagers. It's teenagers.
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But it was not surprising, because they had been up all night texting. I think that's actually one of those ones where we get these little blind spots.
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So one of my friends said her teenage daughter was struggling with sleep. And I said, Oh, you know what's going on. How's this working? And she said, Oh, you know it's the texting and the messaging. And I said, Well, so what I found is you take the phone away and you put it downstairs. So my kids it basically 930 devices downstairs. Thank you, and they can be on charge. You can do other things. I don't care, but you need to be going into your sleep routine. And she said, Yeah, but she uses it, has her alarm clock. I said, you can buy cheap alarm clock. She doesn't need to use her phone. And it was just one of those situations she made. She went, Oh, yeah, of course. What would be really helpful for us is to, every now and then audit our teenagers set up with them to say, Should we just have a chat? How is this working out for you? You know, if they are struggling to get up in the morning, if they are sleeping in very late at the weekends, maybe have a look at how it's all set up and discuss it with them and say there is a problem here. Can we adjust things slightly? Yeah.
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I mean, I've kind of tried that, and this resistance, shall we No way. My trains, they do not have their phones at night. They would like to have, especially one of them. And it's because it's exciting, it's fun, it's banter, it's like and you can hear it pinging, and it's not in Israel,
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and it's the one time when there aren't adults around. Yeah, right, fun.
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And, you know, phones have obviously designed to keep them, keep them thinking. But there are, you know, there are. And I have this conversation my eldest, there are three variables. I always think that, you know, teenagers and adults and myself included, they're like the basics. It's sleep, nutrition and exercise, and they're really simple to sort they're fundamental, and we're really bad at them.
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Absolutely, it's a big one. So we have these discussions, and, you know, slow changes. My eldest is getting better at it, but it's been a long struggle,
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and it's actually really, really important. And without wanting to over stress, it prolonged sleep loss is connected to mental health disorders like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, suicide, even weight and diabetes. So I heard on the radio just the other day, a scientist saying we're starting to wonder whether the big increase in obesity in teenagers could be linked to lack of sleep. Now, whether that's true or not, who knows, but he said there's a tendency when you're tired to eat another 250 calories on average, and usually they're not good calories.
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They're in front of you exactly sweet and what's what can eat.
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Now that will keep me awake, because, you know, going to bed is not an option. So this is the problem with that. And then also the risk taking increases. They found. TJ, teenagers are far more likely to engage in drug use, alcohol use, smoking, risky sexual behavior if they're tired.
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Yes. I mean, sleep is crucial, and I totally put my hand up for I'm terrible at it, you know, I just do things a bit too late and then go to bed a little bit too late. And it's just that's annoying, that, because of the melatonin and the change in that that they often do, wake up at about 11pm and then when they come in and go, it's particularly my eldest because, yeah, yeah, don't think the younger ones is kicked in as much. Yeah, it will. Let's cook.
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Let's, you know, Friday,
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yeah, and that's and that's your special time together, yes, which
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then means I'm knackered the next day. But, you know, that's I judge that to be totally worth it. And also with sleep, I think we get used to feeling sleep deprived. I think that can be really and I think teenagers do as well. I know that mine have, you know, they get it's like when you have newborns, isn't it? And I had twins and a tiny toddler as well. So I had a long time of just living in a fog, and you get used to it. And I'm sure that my teens, you know, they have a lot of late nights and and they they you can't remember what it's like to not feel tired. It's just becomes normal.
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Yes, things
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to talk to your teenager about budgeting eight hours of sleep into your weekday schedule. My daughter said, How on earth am I supposed to do that? Because she's working really, really hard. So when you've got a highly ambitious, very driven teen who goes into school, they come home and they're working till quite late, and she always says to me, you know, I get really interested at 10 o'clock at night. And I said, Well, I guess just go with it.
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Yes, but sleep, can you sleep when you get home? Yeah, I know creating a consistent bedtime routine to help with relaxation or falling asleep. So literally, you can say, Okay, we need to have that bedtime routine kick in at this time. And here's what you can do to create. Create a good routine so a cool room, the stuff can't be in, it your work and your your devices and everything they need to come out of the room, because otherwise you see your room as something other than some way where you sleep. Having a shower before you go to bed is a fantastic thing because it raises your temperature, and then your temperature drops, and then you're more likely to fall asleep. Because, yes, that's absolutely the case, avoiding the obvious caffeine and energy drinks, which, you know, I like a hot chocolate, but caffeine in it. But you know that, I'm sure that's not helping me. You know, mattresses, pillows? Are they good? You know, has your child got a pillow that they feel comfortable? Just little things like that. But it's worth going through all of those things and
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mindfulness as well.
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I mean, I've my daughter had, she had quite a long time where she struggled to fall asleep, and then it became, you know, thing that she thought about, why can't fall asleep, and and she had, and I would guide her through various things which was helpful. Or the boys as well, if they had stressful things the next day, you know, do like a body scan with them. And it always really, really helped.
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But then there are so many CDs out there, not CDs that's showing my age, so many things you can find online, downloading some mindfulness, bedtime things. There are millions out there on, you know, everywhere, and they're really good. She had some particular ones that they were really, really helpful. So that's definitely something.
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And cognitive behavioral therapy, if it's getting too much, no problems.
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Are
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often thoughts at bedtime, and that's what I teach kids when I'm teaching mindfulness. It's the thoughts that are keeping you up. It's so we want to get out of our heads, our busy heads, because suddenly your head gets busy at night, because it's quite your mind goes, Oh, look at all these things you need to remember and worry about. I read a phantom into your body. So using your breath and using meditation skills can be really, really helpful, even if it's just for a few minutes.
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And I read a fantastic piece where the guy said, what you have to do is very often it's exactly that you lie down and you start worrying about all the things. And he said. So one of the great things to do is you need to set aside half an hour to worry, or 10 minutes to worry, or something, piece of paper worry. You've got to worry right now, yeah, but then you're not allowed to worry after that. Okay? You it means you just not getting enough time during the day to do those things. So actually giving yourself the the chance to do them can help. But I love your body scan thing. That's what a wonderful
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because worrying, like I just sitting here thinking, that sounds great, but my mind might not listen to that. It might go, Yeah, I know I worried earlier, but here it is again, just for the second time. Did
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I write it down properly? Yeah,
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run through that one more time. So you want to get out of that, just for the hard of hearing at the back, the worries come back.
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How do you regulate sleep in your family?
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Do you have any great tips for us? We, as you can hear, we would love to hear your tips.
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Thanks for continuing to listen.
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I know it's the holidays, and you've probably got lots of other things to be doing, so it's wonderful to still have you with me. If you liked this episode and you found it useful, send it to somebody else who's probably panicking about their teens sleeping in and if you would like to get in contact, you can use teenagers untangled@gmail.com or you can find all the old episodes. If there's something that's bugging you, go onto the website. It's www teenagersuntangled com. Look for the episodes. And there's a keyword search there, so you can look for you should just put in any word and see whether we've got an episode on it. Keep coming with your suggestions.
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I've had some amazing ones, which I will be covering, and you can rate us. It would be lovely to get any reviews or ratings from you. That's it for now. Have a great week. Bye.
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Bye. For now. You
