Understanding Parental Influence on Your Teens Behavior
Why Is My Teen Sleeping So Much?
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By Hugh C. McBride
The bane of first-period teachers, and the punch line in more than a few sitcoms and comic strips, the "sleepy student" is often seen as emblematic of a slacker society in which late-night revelry and endemic indifference render American adolescents incapable of meeting the most modest of academic standards: consciousness.
But when science enters the equation, it turns out that biology is much more to blame than attitude is. Today's teens aren't getting enough sleep - and it's the adults' fault, not theirs.
How Much is Enough?
Ask most Americans how much sleep an individual needs to get, and odds are that their answer will be "eight hours." The notion that humans need to spend one-third of every day asleep is one of the more commonly known health-related facts. But when it comes to teens, the conventional wisdom isn't so wise.
Most sleep experts advise that eight hours might be adequate for an adult, but youth aged 10 to 17 should be getting between nine and nine-and-a-half hours of sleep each night. For a student who has to wake up at 6 a.m. in order to get to school on time, this translates into a 9 p.m. bedtime. Though this simple math makes this appear to be an easily solved problem, two obstacles stand in the way: school schedules and circadian rhythms.
"Almost all teen-agers, as they reach puberty, become walking zombies because they are getting far too little sleep," Cornell University psychologist James B. Maas, Ph.D., told Monitor on Psychology staff writer Siri Carpenter for an Oct. 9, 2001 article.
The Effects of Sleeplessness
The National Sleep Foundation has reported that as few as 15 percent of American teens are getting an adequate amount of sleep every night. And a series of studies and a wealth of anecdotal evidence have revealed that the results of this epidemic of teen sleeplessness range from distracting to deadly.
"Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body," Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago said in an Oct. 9, 2005 article in the Washington Post. "We have nothing in our biology that allows us to adapt to this behavior."
In addition to having difficulty concentrating in school, and thus learning less and performing more poorly on exams, individuals who experience extended or recurring periods of sleep deprivation may also be at higher risk for the following:
Parents are advised to help ensure that their children get adequate amounts of sleep by developing consistent evening routines, limiting their nighttime activities, especially during the school week, and ensuring that they get to bed at a reasonable hour. Children who experience severe fatigue or who have extreme difficulty falling and staying asleep should be evaluated by a health care professional to rule out the existence of a sleep disorder or other physical condition.
Ultimately, helping teenagers to understand that their bodies are craving more sleep, and that getting more shuteye can have a positive effect on virtually every other aspect of their lives, requires an ongoing effort in order to avoid potentially devastating consequences.
"This is a much bigger problem than people think," sleep expert Richard D. Simon, Jr., M.D., told Joyce Frieden for her Aug. 21, 2000 WebMD article. "They underestimate the problems of being sleepy in the daytime and how it impairs mood and affects performance."