Tips for the Teenage Night Owl

Most teenagers are hard wired by their circadian rhythms to be night owls.  It is one of the ways their body and brains are changing.  The big problem with this is that most schools start very early in the morning.  Some high schools start before the sun has even risen!  So what is a teenage night owl to do?  For starters, read my earlier posts on tips for getting a good night’s sleep because those will be important.  The hard part though is how to shift your internal clock to be able to go to bed and then get up early. 

First, try some experiments to see just how much sleep you actually need.  Most teenagers will need between 8- 9 hours a night.  On a Saturday night, make note of the time that you are going to bed, don’t set your alarm and let your body wake up naturally on Sunday.  This will give you an indication of how much sleep your body needs.  I suggest doing this on Saturday night to Sunday morning because most teens are so tired by the end of the week their bodies will need more sleep than usual on Friday night. 

Once you have an idea of how much sleep you need, then decide what is the latest that you can get up in the morning and not be late for school.  I suggest doing whatever can be done the night before when you are more awake and have the energy.  This means picking out your clothes, packing your bag, making your lunch, and even showering.  It is better to do these things at night when you are awake then trying to do them in the morning when your body just wants to sleep.  This will let you get more sleep in the morning.

Here is an example.  I know that my body needs 9 hours of sleep.  I have to be at school at 7:30 am.  It will take me 30 minutes to get ready and 15 minutes to drive there.  I need to be up then by 6:45 am.  If I need 9 hours of sleep, then I should be in bed by 9:45 pm. 

If you are used to going to bed late it can be hard to try to go to bed that early, so I suggest taking steps of moving your bed time back.  If you usually go to bed at midnight, then try 11:30 or 11 pm.  The next night try 10:45 or 10:30.  Keep doing this until you are at the time you need to be in bed.  It can be very tempting to then on the weekend stay up super late because you know you don’t have to be up early the next morning, but I would suggest avoiding this.  That will make it really hard then to go to bed on Sunday night and get up early on Monday morning.  It is okay to stay up a little later on Friday and Saturday night, but you don’t want to do it by several hours. 

Your body will still want to be up at night, so that is why it will be very important to follow the other tips that I have written about, e.g. limiting exposure to light etc. 

It may sound like a lot of work, but if you can get yourself getting to bed earlier you will feel better in the morning and it will be worth it! 

When You Just Can’t Sleep

We have all had those nights when we turn out the light and then we lay there, and we lay there, and we lay there.  We wait for sleep to come, and instead all that shows up is the anxiety and frustration about how we are not falling asleep.  The following are some tips for when this happens.  Of course not everything works for everyone, but try some of them out and see what will work for you.

Occupy Your Brain

There was some reasoning behind the old counting sheep adage.  The idea of it is to occupy your brain so that you aren’t ruminating, thinking over and over about something that is bothering you.  If you find that you are lost in anxiety and can’t sleep, the first question is to ask yourself if there is anything that you can do right now.  If the answer is no, then the best thing you can do for yourself is to get some rest.  In my last entry, I had suggested reading a book and focusing on the characters and story after you turn out the light.  If you have done this and still can’t sleep, try reading some more until you start to feel drowsy.  Another great way of occupying your brain is to listen to a body scan meditation while lying in bed.  You can find these online and they are a great way of focusing on something other than your worry thoughts.  Many people report that they end up falling asleep in the middle of the body scan, and in this case, that is okay!  Finally, you can try listening to some soothing music, or to talk radio like NPR.  Do this in the dark, with your head on your pillow and you may just drift off to sleep.  If you can set a timer so that the device turns off the music or radio automatically, even better.

Don’t Pay Attention to the Time

For many people, part of what keeps them up is the thought that they should be asleep, and they start counting down the hours until they have to get up.  The more you think about time, the less time you will get to spend sleeping.  I suggest not looking at the time at all.  If you have an alarm clock with a clearly visible time illuminating from it, turn it around.  If you use your phone as an alarm, don’t look at the time on it.  Morning will come whether you are counting down the hours or not. 

Don’t Use Your Bed for Anything Except Sleep

This is a tip that you need to have done before the sleepless night occurs.  Beds should only be for sleep (or for the reading that leads up to sleep).  Some people think that their beds are so comfortable that they are great places to do their homework, their studying, pay their bills, watch TV, etc.  The problem with this is that in doing so, we start to associate our beds with being awake and doing stuff.  What we want is our bed to only be associated with sleep.  There is a phenomenon called conditioning in which we make pairings and will have responses to things without even realizing it.  Just like how the kitchen can become paired with being hungry, we want the bed to be paired with being tired.  If you have a hard time sleeping at night, you may want to assess whether you are using your bed for things other than sleeping, and then consider finding another place to do your work or watch TV.