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It’s 10:00 p.m. and I am racing to bed. This is what I’ve always done since childhood—race to bed. I value sleep like currency. I love nothing more than to climb into tightly drawn covers; feel the smooth coolness of the sheets and let my head sink into a plump down pillow. The truth is—I am racing all day. I am starting a business and teaching and speaking and writing. I am cleaning and doing laundry and carpooling. Like most women, my days are one long race. But at the end of the day –around 6:00 p.m.--a kind of alarm goes off in my head and I become hyper-focused on the finish line that is blessed sleep! So I fumble through those last few matters that stand between me and dreamland---dinner, homework, dishes…
10:30 is already late for me. But now my head has hit the pillow and I’m happy…and then, I am out. I am not out for long, however, before I am awakened by a familiar sound---
Ping-- Ping—Pinggg.
I know this sound anywhere, because I have heard it everywhere— sounding off constantly wherever my 16-year-old daughter is located in the house, or whenever she is sitting in the car. It’s my daughter’s cell phone telling her that she has a text message. Her bedroom is right above mine. I usually cannot hear much of what goes on in her room. But I am hearing this Ping---Ping—Pinggg- muted, but unmistakable. It stops. I snuggle deeper into the pillow and I drift off. But I am awakened again—
Ping!
I am annoyed now. I know that her adolescent body just can’t wind down until late. As Chris of MomathonBlog.com, points out in her post, Do Teens Need a Bedtime, the teen circadian rhythm is different than ours. The hormone, melatonin, that trips the sleep alarm in my head at 6:00 p.m. doesn’t kick in for teenagers until much later. But it’s also responsible for lulling them to stay in bed past the time to rise for school. This makes getting a full night sleep, which optimally is 9 hours for teens, nearly impossible. Now add to this formula all of the digital non-sleep enhancers. Like this f#%*$ cell phone!!
There’s lots of blog buzz about the detrimental effects of cell phone use on teen sleep habits . The studies sited on The Medical News suggest that excessive use of cell phones can cause disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue. TIME's Alice Park reports that in a year-long study of 1600 13-to-15-year-olds, "the teens who used their cell phone more than once a week after lights-out were five times more likely than kids who never used cell phones at bedtime to say they felt tired one year later." Even more alarming, a USATODAY post suggests that the radiation from cell phones is changing the brain and disrupting the body's rhythms.
I write daily about teens, I know the scary stats. So in the interest of helping her prioritize sleep, I have already asked my daughter not to bring that phone to bed with her. She is supposed to plug it into the charger on the opposite side of the room and turn off the ringer. I know that the phone is with her in bed tonight from the location of the Pings.
Pinggg- There it is again. Its midnight now!
Pinggg- now 12:15
Pinggg- now its 12:30… That’s it!!
In my household of five children, I have always strictly banned electronic/digital devices from my kids’ bedrooms—no TVs, no Desk-top computers. But as the devices get smaller, enforcement gets tougher. I march up to her room and swing open the door loudly…angrily. No wonder the volume of her text message alert is set so high, she has to hear it over the Ipod currently plugged into her ears! I don’t have to say a word. She removes the earphones, wraps them around the Ipod, grabs her cell phone and hands them all over to me. I turn on my heels—still no words spoken—and leave the room. We both know that I will have a full month of peaceful slumber before these devices return to her full-time possession.
My daughter still may not get to sleep as early as I’d like, but at least for the duration of this punishment month, her electronic devices will not be the cause!
Do your kids have late night habits? Are they related
