Helping your Teen Sleep Better: Practical Tips and Routines
- Apr 6
- 3 min read
Updated: May 5
This section features articles written by invited guest authors.
Blog written by Penny Goodwin, Author of Hold Your Teen Close.
Sleep deprivation affects so many areas of our teens’ lives, including food choices, attention span, memory, reaction time, decision-making, safety (including driving ability), and school grades, as poor grades are often due to a lack of concentration and understanding. Not forgetting how the body follows the mind, if something is worrying our teens, it will most likely affect their sleep, making them feel nervous or even hyperactive.
With this in mind, supporting healthier sleep habits can make a significant difference. The following sleep tips can help create better routines, improve sleep quality, and support both the physical and emotional well-being of teenagers:
Tips:
Turn off blue screen devices 2-3 hours before bedtime.
Ensure the bedroom is cool, dark, and comfortable, and use heavy curtains to block out the light.
If your teen likes a quiet bedroom, consider using a white noise machine.
To help circadian rhythms, encourage your teen to be active daily during the day and get plenty of fresh air and exposure to sunlight, ideally before midday.
Exercise is great during the daytime but best avoided 1-2 hours before bedtime, especially vigorous exercise.
Limit daytime naps to 20 minutes and, if possible, avoid them.
Keep a notebook and pen by your teen's bed to jot down thoughts, helping to move thoughts from mind onto paper to clear their head.
Ensure your teen eats enough during the daytime so they aren’t hungry during the night.
Avoid large/heavy meals just before bedtime. It’s better to eat more during the day rather than eating too close to bedtime.
Sleep plays a vital role during adolescence, supporting not only physical growth, but also cognitive development and emotional regulation. During this stage, the body undergoes significant changes, including growth spurts that require adequate rest. At the same time, sleep is essential for memory consolidation and learning, which are crucial during the school years. Without enough sleep, teenagers may experience mood swings, irritability, and increased stress levels, all of which can impact their overall well-being and daily functioning.
It’s imperative that we work together with our teens to aid their sleep and constantly revisit the situation to improve both quality and quantity. Have a chat with your teen to find out what they think would work best for them. If they’re sleep deprived, be flexible and open to their suggestions, and to avoid making matters worse, don’t make it an issue or label it as a problem. Getting to bed earlier doesn't necessarily mean that your teen will get more sleep, as often isn't the case. It’s not necessarily a sign of wanting to abuse the situation if your teen suggests a later bedtime, it may simply be that they're fed up with laying wide awake for hours before they're able to sleep and want to retire later, so they can fall asleep faster.
Sleep routines are beneficial because they train our bodies to know what to expect. Getting up at the same time each morning and going to bed at the same time each evening helps our sleep pattern. By following this, after a week or so, you should naturally wake up/fall asleep at the same time each day.
These are just some of the tips covered in my book, Hold your Teen Close, where I go into more depth and include additional tools and explanations.
