Son staying up until 3-4 am in his room on break

[Anonymous]

How do you get your night owl teen to sleep at regular hours on weekends and school breaks?

[Anonymous]

I don't.

[Anonymous]

Previous poster, don’t you worry they aren’t getting good sleep and screwing up the cycle for the school week?

[Anonymous]

my 9yo DD is a night owl and regularly has sleepovers friday & saturday nights-stays up to 2am, 4am, 5am....She gets tight back into swing of weekday 6:30am wake up/8:30 bedtime. I don’t worry unless she wakes me up! i need my sleep. (kids know they can come to me if needed.)

[Anonymous]

As long as they don't wake me up, I don't worry about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Previous poster, don’t you worry they aren’t getting good sleep and screwing up the cycle for the school week?

He knows he has to be up in time for school without me calling him.

Their sleep cycles are already messed with.

What is he doing? Does he want to sleep and can't?

[Anonymous]

Staying up to 3 or 4 IS my teen's natural sleep cycle. I'm happy to see him catch up on sleep even if he is doing it at weird times. And I already know that he's not getting enough sleep during the school week but there isn't much to be done about that. A 9 or 10 o'clock bedtime doesn't really fit into his schedule. It will be better when he's in college and won't need to be up at 7:00.

I will wake him up by 10:00 today so he can at least go to bed by his usual time (between 12 and 1).

[Anonymous]

Didn’t you do this as a teen? I sure did.

[Anonymous]

School is a messed up sleep cycle.

During breaks I tend to let my teenagers wake and sleep on their own schedules, and let them know ahead of time any family obligations. As long as they are ready and not horribly ill mannered from lack of sleep, I let them do as they will with their sleep.

During school, I tell them when they need to be asleep in order to get 8 hours of sleep. Unless they are horribly ill mannered from lack of sleep, aside from letting them know if I know they aren't getting enough sleep, I let it be.

If they are ill mannered from lack of sleep, I point it out in a non-confrontational way. If they don't address it, I re-establish bedtime rules. I haven't had to do that in ages, which I'm thankful for since I'll be sending one of mine off to college next year. I know sleep's going to be a problem, but I also feel comfortable DC has the tools to figure it out.

[Anonymous]

I agree. Break is the only time teens get to follow their own normal sleep cycle. One of mine is a night owl, the other isn't, and you see them revert to this over longer breaks.

[Anonymous]

I let my 11 year old do it.

[Anonymous]

He has to give me his phone at 10:30 on weekends/vacations so if he is still awake on his own, there is nothing I can do about it.

[Anonymous]

i remember these days.

As long as DC can sleep late in the morning, or catch a nap or even loll about watching Netflix, it's relaxing and a nice change of pace.

Kids at this age are resilient.

[Anonymous]

I let them manage their own sleep schedules. Unless I need them up for some reason they are free to sleep in if they want to on breaks/weekends.

As long as they get up and get to school on time and/or when I need them to get up for some reason (and they do) it is not an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t you do this as a teen? I sure did.

NP.

I didn’t voluntarily stay up after 12:30 until college. Even then, never 3 or 4 am by choice. While I believe that adolescents have different sleep cycles, I think screens are making it worse. In the late 80s and early 90s, even cable tv was boring at that time of day.