At a time when lock down can be reintroduced at any time, one way to help your child succeed is to develop healthy sleep habits. There are so many reasons that prevent teenagers from getting enough sleep that it seems that sleepless nights are normal for every teenager.
However, parents need to understand that a healthy sleep habit is a must-have not only for teens but also a good foundation for adult life with a minimum amount of stress. But for this, you need to stop taking a blind eye to the child’s sleepless nights and start acting.
How Can Parents Help Their Teenagers with Healthy Sleep?
There are some effective tips that can help your teen develop healthy sleep habits. According to the research, only 11% of students have no sleep problems, while 40% of students feel rested only twice a week. Today, it is believed that 6 hours is enough for an adult, but when it comes to a teenager, this may not be enough. Therefore, it is time to take action and help the student succeed at the university instead of spending sleepless nights with textbooks or yawning at lectures. Here is how.
1. Help Your Teen Organize a Schedule
Time management is a problem for many students. Most students like to postpone everything until late night because during the day there are so many interesting things besides studying. Offer your help with organizing your teen’s daily schedule. This will help not only to establish the right sleep pattern but also to cope with all other duties so that there will be enough time for social media, walks with friends, and other entertainment.
Sometimes students’ sleep problems are the result of the huge academic load, so if you cannot help with some academic assignments, then consider online assistance. You just need to enter “need someone to write my research paper” or “write my dissertation” in the search bar, and then you can find a service that will help your child cope with the difficult and time-consuming task.
Surely, your teen doesn’t have to use these services all the time, but when there is a real difficulty, why spend the whole night on it and destroy a healthy sleep schedule in exchange for a good grade? Online services that appear in response to the “write my term paper” request will save your child’s time and, most importantly, health. Difficulties in the educational process are quite normal, however, some of them may cause stress and result in sleepless nights, which will adversely affect subsequent academic success and, of course, health.
2. Talk About the Importance of Sleep
Many parents believe that it makes no sense to explain something to teenagers, as they will resist. However, this is not always true. You just need to find the right approach to your child and kindly welcome him/her to listen instead of establishing new rules without any explanation.
Talk about the importance of healthy sleep for the body and the benefits a child can get. Try a scientific approach or find an interesting video about healthy sleep importance on the TedTalks.
Try not to provoke a protest, otherwise, all efforts will be wasted. Reassure your teen that he/she needs a good night’s sleep to achieve his/her goals. Also, do not forget that the schedule should be observed even on weekends, otherwise it will be difficult for the teenager to get used to the new lifestyle.
3. Reasonably Restrict the Gadgets
Of course, this advice sounds like an impossible mission, but you should still try to take measures so that your child does not use the gadget an hour before bedtime.
However, this new rule shouldn’t be painful for the child – they still should have their social media and/or online games time. Thus, you need to return to the previous point, help your student with a wise education-life balance and still free up some time for favorite activities. With proper time management, a one-hour-before bed gadgets ban will not be a problem for your child.
The easiest way to restrict gadgets is to turn off Wi-Fi at a certain time. Hence, this may not be an obstacle for your child to continue spending time on the Internet, but this will demonstrate your serious intentions and then the teen will stop resisting.
4. Equip the Sleeping Place Properly
Many adolescents tend to do their homework in bed and this, on a psychological level, erases the boundaries of the fact that a sleeping place is intended for sleeping. Thus, you, first of all, need to create such a workplace that will be comfortable for your child to study.
Secondly, pay attention to the sleeping place. Perhaps it’s time for your child to replace the bed with a new one? Consider orthopedic mattresses and pillows. They will help your child fall asleep better and sleep well. The right mattress and pillow will be the key to success in your child’s fight for healthy sleep. In addition to healthy sleep, such things will help improve posture and get real relaxation during sleep.
5. Wake Up Teen’s Biological Clock
Another equally effective way to help your child with sleep is a special supplement called Melatonin. This supplement can signal the body that it is nightfall and help you fall asleep better. The advantage of this product is that it is not a sleeping pill and can be bought at any drug store.
- It is recommended to take the minimum dosage if you plan to consult a sleep doctor.
- Typically, these supplements should be taken an hour or half an hour before bedtime and exclusively at night.
Over time, the use of such a product will wake up the biological clock, and then the process of falling asleep and the sleep schedule will not be a problem for the student.
The Final Words
Through these activities, you will help your student to do well in college and be healthy. All this will only be beneficial and allow you teenager to manage their time wisely and do much more than they could before. By the way, if you start implementing all these actions in life, you will notice changes in your child’s behavior for the better. So, get started with this task right now!
A good night’s sleep is essential to the growth and development of children, and children require much more sleep than adults. Sometimes however, children are unable to get the necessary amounts of nightly sleep that they need, and it can sometimes be attributed to a sleep disorder.
At The Alaska Sleep Clinic we provide consultation and therapeutic management for a wide variety of pediatric sleep disorders. We understand that your child’s health is important to you and we want to assure you that our Board Certified Sleep Physicians are highly adept at treating child sleep disorders.
Children require more special care than adults and it is important to us that our physicians are trained in communicating with children of all ages and are experienced in calming the fears of nervous young patients while providing quality care for them in a relaxed, non-threatening environment.
Author:
Frank Hamilton
