Are you struggling to get your child out of bed especially with the dark mornings? Well there is a biological reason that children, especially teenagers, find it a challenge to get up. Like many mammals, their sleep patterns shift during the adolescent period. From puberty to the end of the teens, the circadian clock is programming them to go to sleep and wake up around three to four hours later than adults. Teenagers need between eight and 10 hours of sleep a night. Yet according to research very few teens (as little as 15%) are getting the sleep they need.
Sleep is not only important for the consolidation of memory and learning but it is also important for teenagers to mature physically, emotionally and intellectually. So, helping them get the required amount of sleep will make it easier for them to get up in the mornings.
When we do the same things every night before we go to sleep, we teach our body the signals that it’s time for bed. Here are some tips to help with this:
- A warm bath or shower 90 minutes before bedtime
- Avoid technology including the TV an hour before bedtime
- Physical exertion and homework should be restricted before 8:00am
- Make bedrooms tech-free (there will be more on this in a future post)
- Keep bedrooms cool
- Establish a regular bed and wake up time and stick to it, coming as close as you can on the weekends. Keep weekend sleep-ins to no more than an hour of additional rest
So yes, unfortunately teenagers do have a good excuse to not want to get up, but hopefully these tips will help. If you want some extra tips (maybe you struggle to get out from under that nice warm cosy duvet in the morning yourself!) then have a read of the following article – how to cope with dark mornings: https://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/wellbeing/11-ways-to-cope-with-the-dark-mornings-23638.