It’s the final year of school. Friends, work, study, sport, parents — there’s a lot for students to figure out! As a parent, you likely want to see your child succeed, but you also want to see them stay healthy by, at the very least, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule.
However it can be hard to help your child get enough sleep and maintain a proper routine during the HSC!
Today, we’re going to break down some key steps that you can use to ensure your child is sleeping well and getting the most out of their nights!
Ready to take on the challenge to fix their sleep schedule? Let’s go!
Ask Them Questions
Provide Them with Solutions
We will break this into two categories, with specific points that you can work through for each! Parents have a massive role to play in helping their child get the right amount of sleep — just look at what Stephen (97.25 ATAR) said:
“My parents kept me accountable by making sure I went to bed at a reasonable hour because a good night’s sleep is crucial in increasing learning potential and concentrating in exams.”
Now that you know the importance of playing your part in getting your teen to sleep, let’s break down how you should go about it.
Ask Them Questions
One of the best ways to get your teen on your side is by asking them rational questions. This is useful for a few reasons.
First, it promotes positive conversation, where you can work through concerns in a systematic way. It also gives you more of a chance to understand exactly where they are coming from, so you can approach the situation with empathy and insight.
It provides open communication that you can both grow from.
Q1. How do they feel the following morning?
If your child is waking up tired, that is a really great indication that their sleep could be severely lacking. Find out if they wake with a headache, haziness or feel as if they are unable to get out of bed.
Even if your child wakes up feeling great, they still may not be getting enough sleep!
Q2. Do they struggle to stay awake in class, or feel tired in the early afternoon?
Sometimes, people who are sleep deprived don’t feel it hit them until much later in the day. They can be a sign that their circadian rhythm is off.
This means that the body’s natural cycle of sleep and wakefulness is not compatible with someone’s actual lifestyle. For example, your teen may want to sleep 1am-9am, but actually has school at 8am.
Because of this, we can start to get sleepy during the day, rather than at night.
Resetting the circadian rhythm and improving their sleep schedule can be hard, but the below tips will likely help!
Provide Them with Solutions
Once you have listened to your teen and heard their concerns, it’s time to start implementing some changes!
It’s important to remember that the HSC probably isn’t going to be the time where your child has the complete, ideal, muse-like sleep routine. Let’s face it, do any of us?
These tips are designed to create an ideal balance between still getting everything done during the day and ticking off that 7-9 hours sleep a night.
How many hours of sleep should teens be getting? Find out here!
#1: Consistent wake and sleep times
By promoting a consistent sleep routine, you will help your child’s internal clock become better oriented, able to predict when it is close to sleep time.
In doing this, melatonin, the chemical that has the most control over our sleep patterns, will be released in the right amount and the right times, coaxing your child into sleepiness!
If they’re getting sleep in odd parts of the day, there’s a good chance their melatonin secretion hasn’t been very consistent. This may be because they go to bed at different times each day.
This is also true in creating a good wake up schedule and getting your child out in the sun ASAP!
On a practical level, how can you help this happen?
After you’ve had a chat with your child and allowed them to take some ownership over their sleep and over their day (so they don’t feel the need to stay up super late), you might consider putting other methods in place.
Things like creating a charging place for technology that is outside your child’s room, going to bed at the same time as them or getting them a watch to monitor sleep can all work well.
#2: Good night routines
This tip will help your child get the kind of consistent sleep you just discussed!
We recommend checking on your child 30 minutes before bedtime to ensure they have stopped studying, are off devices and are doing something relaxing.
Why? Their bodies, like yours, need a wind-down time to signal that sleep is near. This podcast is really insightful when considering how to reclaim sleep.
There’s a couple of landmarks that should be a must in a good night routine, according to the doctor featured in the above podcast. They are:
After this broad criteria has been filled, put the ball in your child’s court and let them figure out what works for them! They may enjoy a bath, a night walk, podcast or a book. Each teen is going to be different in what they need before bed.
#3: Daily exercise
Good sleep really starts during your child’s day. There is good evidence to suggest that exercise plays a key role in sleep. In fact, even moderate-vigorous exercise is often touted as one of the key ways to feel sleepy and get to bed quickly each night!
When we exercise, a chemical called serotonin is released. This chemical has a key part to play in happiness, but also regulating our circadian rhythm, leading to increased consistency!
Exercise is also a way to reduce stress, as cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies are decreased. If your child is awake at night because they are stressed, this can be very useful!
As much as you can tell your child to exercise, the most effective thing is to give them options! Suggest sports they really enjoyed as a child, or find something new they can do. Perhaps you will even offer to pay for a membership or club registration.
Exercise doesn’t have to be going for a jog! It can be dance, netball, roller skating, swimming — you name it! Just aim to have your child doing at least 30 minutes of activity a day.
#4: Promote separate places for work and play
Our final tip is a really important one to fixing their sleep schedule — your child should never study in their bed! In fact, if they can, it’s great to have them studying in a different room all together.
Practically speaking, studying in bed promotes such poor work-life balance! But it’s bigger than that.
Studying in bed can lead to poor sleep hygiene, when our bodies don’t make key associations with certain rooms or locations for sleeping. This may decrease the melatonin released before bed.
It also means your body doesn’t associate any key place that is restful and peaceful, which is problematic for getting those 40 winks.
Providing your child with a different place to study or work is key to sorting out their sleep schedule. Even the kitchen table will do!
And that’s it!
Now that you know how to help your child practically in creating a great sleep schedule, hopefully it is something you will try and have success with.
Just because it may not be perfect doesn’t minimise the profound impact a sleep routine can have on your child’s happiness and academic success. Keep trying, and you will find a good balance!
On the hunt for other educational resources? Check out some of our other articles below:
- Why Study Breaks are Critical to Helping Your Child Maintain Their Wellbeing During the HSC
- The Ultimate Study Skills Handbook: How To Help Your Child Get Organised For The HSC
- Negative Self Talk: 3 Ways to Respond to Your Child’s Inner Critic
- How to Help Your Child Reduce Digital Distractions to Stop Procrastinating and Start Studying!
- The Ultimate Guide to Helping Your Child Stay Motivated for the HSC
Lucinda Garbutt-Young hopes to one day be writing for a big-shot newspaper… or maybe just for a friendly magazine in the arts sector. Right now, she is enjoying studying a Bachelor of Public Communication (Public Relations and Journalism) at UTS while she writes on the side. She also loves making coffees for people in her job as a barista, and loves nothing more than a sun shower.
