How To Improve Teenagers Sleep – and Win!

*This is a collaborative guest post

Be Resilient Be You is a brand-new book, published by Collins, and written by well-being author and psychotherapist Becky Goddard-Hill. The book provides guidance to teens in all areas of their life to enable them to develop the coping strategies they will need to handle the often-challenging teen years. 

We are happy to be part of the Be Resilient Be You book tour launch and welcome Becky here to share an extract from her book with us focussed on supporting teens with their sleep.

Sleep research suggests that a teenager needs between eight and 10 hours of sleep every night. But most teenagers only get about 6.5-7.5 hours’ sleep per night.

 Not enough sleep can cause you to feel less than your best and affect you in lots of negative ways causing:

• Poor academic performance
• Moodiness
• Depression
• Poor concentration
• Clumsiness
• Poor decision making
• Poor attention span

As you can see, not enough sleep is a problem!

The science bit

There is a clear scientific reason why you might find falling to sleep harder in your teens.

Teen brains make the sleep hormone melatonin later at night than kids’ and adults’ brains do. So, teens have a harder time falling asleep and so need to sleep later in the mornings.

Unfortunately school/college don’t take this into account, and start early so you have to work at making sleep easier for you or you won’t get enough

For a strong, resilient body and mind that functions at it’s best you do need to get your sleep sorted.

What will help

• Get active and get outside during the daytime so you are physically tired when it comes to bedtime.
• Smart phones and other devices used around bedtime get your mind racing and the light from them keeps you awake. Darkness tells your brain to release melatonin, while light from any source stops its production. So, keeping your room dark and avoiding screens for an hour before bedtime helps hugely.
• Avoid stimulants such as coffee, tea, sugary, caffeinated and energy drinks in the evening.
• Create a relaxing bedtime routine e.g. a warm bath and a hot milky drink, journalling or reading. Do this regularly so your body links your routine to sleep.
• Try to have as regular a sleep schedule as possible, and you’ll generally find that your “biological clock” will relearn when to fall asleep and wake up. (Do this at the weekend too so Monday mornings are not a massive struggle!)

Be Resilient Be You is out now and available to purchase on Amazon. You can find Becky blogging about wellbeing over at emotionallyhealthykids.com.

I have teamed up with Becky to give away a copy of Be Resilient Be You to one lucky reader. To be in with a chance of winning just complete one or more entries on the Rafflecopter below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway