Adolescent Sleeping Patterns

Teens' wake-sleep cycles

Adults and teenagers have very different wake-sleep cycles, and once you understand these differences you can use them to enhance your relationship with your teenager. Taking this approach to heart means checking your world (and sleep) at the door to cross over temporarily into your teenager's world of time and biological rhythms. Midnight and beyond is the time of deep conversation for most adolescents, even though for most of their parents it is the occasion of much deserved REM sleep.

The average teenager needs just over nine hours sleep every night, even though the average teenager gets just over six hours. Research shows that adolescents have a different circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycle) than adults. This biological difference leaves them feeling awake later into the evening and, as a result, unable to fall asleep at the earlier bedtimes of childhood. Most teenagers don't get sleepy until around 11:00 P.M., which, of course, means they are dragging in the morning when the alarm rings at 6:30 A.M. (Falling asleep at 11:00 P.M. on the button and rising at 6:30 A.M. sharp still means only seven and one-half hours sleep, or ninety minutes shy of what the average teenager requires.) Research conducted at the University of Minnesota indicated that over half the teenagers studied reported feeling most awake after 3:00 P.M. and that 20 percent claimed they fell asleep in school; this comes as no surprise given what time of night they fall asleep and what time in the morning they wake up.

The adult brain, on the other hand, releases the sleep-inducing chemical melatonin at around 7:00 P.M., and this is what makes us so drowsy just after dinner (leading some of us even to grab a catnap on the sofa under the guise of reading the newspaper). This state ensures that we're in bed at a reasonable hour—if we're listening to our bodies—so that we are rested (or at least better rested) when the alarm sounds in the morning. Unfortunately, these different realities of teenage and adult sleep patterns only exacerbate the typical teenage mantra, You just don't understand!

My sixteen-year-old daughter is so damn stubborn. For example, she never gets enough sleep and it's a major hassle to get her out of bed in the mornings. I swear, most of the time she seems to sleepwalk through breakfast and the ride to school, which worries me because she has been making noises lately about getting her driver's license. But no matter what I say, she won't go to bed earlier. I mean, if she just went to bed at 10:00 P.M., everything would work out better.

If you want to see a teenager in her natural sleep habitat, just visit any college dormitory. Midnight is the time of pizza munchies, group dancing in lounges, crisis counseling with friends, existential conversations about the meaning of life, and occasionally, even some studying. Of course, college teenagers understand their wake-sleep rhythms and as a result avoid eight- and nine o'clock classes at all costs. And, if escape from these courses is impossible, they supplement their early rising time with a two-hour, late afternoon nap. (Or they find a note-taking buddy with whom they can alternate class attendance.) The point is that a built-in sleep debt is no longer a given once teenagers enter college—they can work with and around their environment to get the sleep they need. Not so in middle school and high school, where schedules require that students rise early in the morning and remain busy all day and into the evening. The teenager who lives this schedule can get enough rest only by going to bed and falling asleep by 9:30 P.M. at the latest, every night, which isn't likely or realistic.

All this means that, given the current configuration of most school districts, teenagers are unintentionally set up to accumulate some serious sleep debt, which in turn impinges on their moods, concentration, stress levels, and general ability to learn. Teenagers are more sleep deprived than any other population across the life span. Assuming a last-minute wake-up alarm of 7 A.M., let's look at how the typical sleep week goes for a high school sophomore:

Sunday Night. She goes to bed at 10:00 P.M., but can't fall asleep until well after midnight because she isn't tired, in part because of her biological rhythm and in part because she stayed up until well past 1:00 A.M. on Friday and Saturday nights, and slept in as late as her parents allowed. Minus three hours.

Monday Night. She begins her homework on time but gets distracted by a phone call and some e-mails. Goes to bed at 11:00 P.M., but takes her an hour of tossing and turning before she falls asleep. Minus two hours.

Tuesday Night. She does her homework on time but has to counsel a friend on the phone who is having trouble with another friend. Then she has to call a couple of other friends to debrief. Goes to sleep at 12:30 A.M. Minus two and one-half hours.

Wednesday Night. She starts her homework late because she is checking in with the friend who had a problem the night before. Then she feels lazy and reads a magazine for a while before finally doing her homework, but she quickly gets too tired to finish the homework but not tired enough to fall asleep. Goes to bed and sleep at midnight. Minus two hours.

Thursday Night. She is anxious about the big test in school tomorrow—nervous because it's a test and overwhelmed because she didn't even finish the homework from the night before. She calls a friend to go over what is on the test as well as the homework, but they end up talking an extra half an hour about how stressed out they are over tomorrow's test and their lack of time to study. Goes to sleep at 1:00 A.M., but gets up an hour early for some extra cramming. Minus four hours.

At this point, our teenager has accrued a sleep debt of thirteen and one-half hours, and that's a conservative estimate. Worse yet, most sleep experts agree that for every hour of sleep debt we accrue we lose one point from our functional IQ. (Don't worry, getting caught up on your sleep brings you back to your base-level IQ.) This means that when teenagers have tests on Fridays (when most teachers give exams so they can correct them over the weekend and give them back to the students on Monday), most students are down at least thirteen points on their functional IQs. In short, Friday is the worst day of the week to test teenagers.

To complete the above scenario, most teenagers count on the weekends to reduce their sleep debt; on Saturday and Sunday mornings, they sleep in until noon and beyond, as well as grab naps whenever possible (usually when they are supposed to wash the car or rake the leaves). This drives parents crazy. In our society, sleeping late translates into sloth and lazy behavior, an attitude that will get our kids nowhere fast. One of every parents' top fears is that their teenager will never learn to push himself or put in an honest day's work. Ironic—for teenagers it's just about being tired, but for their parents it's about a good work ethic.

More on: Surviving the Teen Years