Trouble Sleeping? Here's How Teens Can Rest Easy

Many teens struggle with maintaining a regular sleep schedule. With early morning wake-ups and frequent late nights it is difficult to get enough rest. According to the Sleep Foundation, teenagers should be getting 8-10 hours of sleep each night. The unfortunate reality is that with sports practices, extracurricular activities, studying, and homework, teens rarely meet this requirement. Sleep is critical for proper development, daily functioning, and maintaining mental health. Something that can help teens work towards repairing their sleep is something called sleep hygiene. 

There are 5 core components of sleep hygiene I typically teach teens who express complaints of either trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or restless sleep. 

Limit screen time before bed

This is arguably the hardest but most important rule. The blue light emitted from screens reduces our body’s production of melatonin and makes our body fight to stay awake. This in addition to all of the stimulus we get from our screens watching shows, scrolling on social media, and texting diminishes our ability to fall asleep naturally. 

Maintain a regular amount of sleep every night

This is most important on the weekend when we throw our sleep schedule off. We tend to oversleep Saturday’s and Sunday’s as we are tired from the lack of sleep throughout the week. While tempting, it actually makes us more tired the following week when we try to get back into our regular sleep and wake routine and our body’s cycle is all thrown off. 

Bed is for sleeping!

Teens tend to like to lay in bed to relax while watching TV, scrolling on phones, or doing homework. While it is important to have a comfortable space to decompress, laying in bed for wake time activities makes our brain create associations with bed and productivity. When we do everything but sleep in our bed our brain does not register that when we lay down at night it is time to produce the chemicals that make us tired. In order to avoid this I often tell teens to find other spaces in the house like the couch or a comfy chair in their room to do rest time activities that are not sleep. 

Have a bed time routine

Whether it is brushing your teeth, showering, washing your face etc. have a solid routine that you complete right before you go to lay down and fall asleep. Try not to do this routine earlier than spend time in bed doing other things or the brain association does not associate the habits with sleep time. 

If you wake up, get up.

Sometimes when we are laying in bed trying to fall asleep for a while we get frustrated and end up grabbing our phones, or a book, or something else to help us “doze off.” If you find you wake up in the middle of the night or can’t get yourself to sleep after trying to get out of bed and move around. It can be a quick trip to the bathroom, to the kitchen to get some water, or just a small walk around the house. When we get up we allow ourselves time to reset and attempt to restart our sleep attempt and make our brains do it’s bed time thing. 

While these habits are proven to be effective in producing more regulated sleep, they are hard to implement all at once. Try to limit screen time before bed one week, then limit screen time before bed and build a bed time routine the next, so on and so forth. It is crucial that teens get regular and restful sleep for their brains to recharge and help them be the best version of themselves the next day.