Sleep Deprivation in Teens Who Text Continuously

"My teenage son is not getting up on time for school due to being up most of the night texting his g-friend. Any advice?"

Getting children and teenagers away from the cell phone is quite a battle for moms and dads. Most (yes, I said “most”) teenagers suffer from sleep deprivation solely because of late night text messaging. Most teens go to sleep with their phone plugged-in right by their heads. Every ping of an incoming message is a temptation to pick up the phone.

According to a recent online survey by Online Parent Support, nearly a quarter of adolescents in a relationship have communicated with a boyfriend or girlfriend hourly between midnight and 5 a.m. via cell phone or texting. One in six communicated 10 or more times an hour through the night.

Most children go to sleep with their phone plugged in right by their heads. Every ping of an incoming message is a temptation to pick up the phone. They know talking on the phone might wake up their moms and dads, but if they text, it probably won't.

Adolescents are famously sleep-deprived already, but experts say some are compounding the problem by staying up into the middle of the night to silently type messages to friends on their mobile phones. Adolescents need on average 9 hours sleep per night, but often only manage 7.5 hours. This leaves them with a sleep debt resulting in poor performance, moodiness and irritability.

With changing biorhythms, adolescents do naturally stay up later -- but not that late. In addition to needing more sleep, adolescents experience a "phase shift" during puberty, falling asleep later at night than do younger children. The brain's circadian timing system-- controlled mainly by melatonin--switches on later at night as pubertal development progresses. Later on, in middle-age, the clock appears to shift back, making it hard for moms and dads to stay awake just when their adolescents are at their most alert.

Like surfing the Internet or watching TV, text- messaging tends to energize adolescents rather than help them fall asleep. Nearly a quarter of adolescents in a relationship have communicated with a boyfriend or girlfriend hourly between midnight and 5 a.m. via mobile phone or texting. It is during these hours that new brain cells and neural connections or "wires" which connect the right and left sides of the brain and are critical to intelligence, self-awareness and performance, grow like branches on a tree. Daytime stimulation, in the form of school and social interaction, gets "hard-wired" into the adolescent brain during the latter stages of sleep, including REM sleep.

Cut these sleep stages short and performance suffers the next day. If you want to learn really well and to be really efficient in your learning, the best way to do it is to get a good night's sleep. Get the mobile phones and TV's out of their rooms, turn off the computer and encourage some light reading in bed before going to sleep.

What to do with too much texting:

1. Check the bill for late night calls. If they have broken the agreement about not using the phone once they are in bed, then the consequence should be to confiscate it for a day or two.
2. Enlist other moms and dads. Polite society used to frown on phone calls after 9 p.m. Network with other moms and dads of adolescents to agree on community standards.
3. Keep phones out of bedrooms. Make an agreement that the phone stays on a charger in the kitchen or away from the bedrooms.
4. Stop rescuing. If you're still getting your teenagers up in the morning, give up that job. It's time they took on that responsibility and managed the consequences of being late if they don't get up in time. Moms and dads should be clear that a parental ride or excuse note is not an option. Stop protecting them from the natural results of their actions.
5. Turn it off. Switch it off half an hour before bedtime. Putting it on silent is not good enough.

Your action steps:

• Sit down with the teenagers in your family and create an agreement around responsible mobile phone use.
• Hold them accountable to the agreement you jointly make.
• Make the consequence (if they break the agreement) a logical, related consequence.
• Confiscate the phone for a day or two (not a month!).
• Restate the terms of the agreement.

==> My Out-of-Control Teen: Help for Parents

My Teenage Daughter is "Waging War" Against My Fiancé

I believe my daughter (who will turn 15 on March 20th) has ODD. Defiant is a word that has always described her, however, she and I have always dealt well together - until this past year. My fiancé moved in last March, and in May, she went to school drunk. So drunk in fact, that she was taken away by the police to the children's hospital for evaluation. She has continued to drink on weekends and every month or so, something occurs. It might be her being brought home by the police, or us calling the police to help as she is violent and acts possessed when she drinks. 

She did spend a week in the mental unit at the children's hospital. She is waging a war to get my fiancé to move out and the two of them are engaging in a war. He employs some pretty consistent methods, and we usually agree, but she has wrecked and stolen some of his things, called him everything under the sun, written notes and put them all over the house telling him to move out...you name it. Now he has no trust for her, nor do they like each other at all. They do not speak a word to each other, be in the same room or car with each other.

I feel that my choice is a very hard one. She is the only thing we really have any conflict over, but I am willing and prepared to say goodbye to what could have been my future with him if it will help her. The thing is, I don't want her to shove him out of the house and know she's got that power. I think he feels helpless and powerless and it makes him angrier.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. J.

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Hi J,

This is a tough one. From your daughter’s point of view, she has everything to lose if you have a boyfriend. She’s been the center of your life and your attention for her whole little life. Why would she want that to change? She’s not mature enough to be sympathetic to your needs. She’s terrified that if you love someone else, there will be less love for her.

My best advice to you is to go very slow. Unless you have been seeing this man for at least 6 months and are pretty sure the relationship is going somewhere, it’s not wise to push her into having a relationship with him. It’s confusing to children to have people move in and out of their lives. It also frightens many children. They wonder, “If you can fall in and out of love with men, can you fall out of love with me?”

There are really two sides to this dilemma. One argument would be as follows:

1. If it comes down to picking between a relationship with your daughter or the boyfriend, lose the boyfriend. Your #1 concern is your child. You can wait to date for another 3 years. You do not need a boyfriend, you need to be a mother to your child.

Another equally valid argument would be:

2. She needs to learn that you, her mother, also have a life – and a need for relationship with a significant other. Don’t cave in to her manipulation or send the message that “if you just act-up enough, you can control what mom says and does.”

Since she is now 15, I think you can have a frank discussion with her about your feelings about your fiancé. You can go on to tell her that your current partner and you are in love and plan to be married someday. And because you are in love, you will continue to see one another. 

Ask her if she thinks she's ready to get over it and accept your fiancé. If she indicates she can't get over it or accept him, then tell her you will be setting up an appointment for a therapist. If she says she's not going, tell her she will be going. 

When it's time for the appointment, you just tell her she is going - period. She may say she's not going to talk at the therapist's office. But that's okay. That's the therapist's problem. (Quite honestly, it sounds like she needs some counseling anyway, maybe in the form of drug and alcohol treatment.)

Mark Hutten, M.A.

==> My Out-of-Control Teen: Help for Parents