Needed: Stories About Teens and Sleep

Sunday night, I woke at 3am and was awake for the remainder of day. I’ve gotten used to waking like this, though. I know all I need is a cup of coffee, to remember that I’m working on reserves, and to keep it mellow, especially around people. But then, Tuesday night I woke at 1am and this time, I didn’t fall back asleep until 7am. I managed to sleep until 9:30 am. Why couldn’t I sleep? Sure, I am concerned about the politics that affect me and my community’s safety, livelihood, and health but, I let the bliss that is bubbling during my current transitional phase transcend all that. Bliss shouldn’t keep me awake at night, should it?? For a few hours, as I lie there, ignoring how wide awake I was and actually thinking I could will myself back to sleep, I conceptualized three blog posts, and this is one of them. Yes, indeed it’s about sleep.

While I’ve written about sleep as part of self-care on this blog, I did a post dedicated to it a while ago on my other blog that describes the physical necessity of sleep for our bodies, particularly how our brains are restored while we rest. That simplified explanation didn’t include the fact that our bodies still haven’t adapted to all the electricity that surround us, how vulnerable we are to elevated magnetic fields while we sleep and how some people are able to design bedrooms with no outlets, wiring, or screens in them while too many of us think TVs and smart controls in our bedrooms are a luxury.

So, let’s think about our teens. You know, those young people with rapidly developing brains and bodies who, like many of us, maintain strong attachments to our cell phones. While we often hear about the implications of late night exposure to the light emanating from screens, we don’t hear so much about the radio-frequency radiation emitted from smartphones. Simply put, the devices should be 8-10 inches away from us while we sleep, not under our pillows.

So, young people enter the space of night with these anxiety inducing devices, some finding relief in the games, music, memes, and videos that they explore while others deepen their fears when material is directed at them that feeds and layers sensationalized information into their minds that really just need rest. To think that cell phones are the only things that keep our young adults awake at night alleviates us from a lot of responsibility.

When I taught eighth grade, I had a student who never slept at night because once, there was a night in his young childhood when his family’s home caught fire, and he lost siblings. I still think about that student.

I have a child of my own who in middle school, would be awake at 11pm, 1 am, 2am, with their feet propped against that bedroom wall while singing country songs from a local radio station. During the day, they’d exhibit such an awful attitude, but I assumed it was teen angst. Nope. Sometime in middle school, my child’s sleep rhythms reversed, leaving my child awake until 2 or 3am, and then needing to get up for school around 7am. I missed this! Her father missed this! I don’t know how, but this went on for years before we caught it. Can you imagine not just days or weeks, but years of this through middle and high school while living life tired and sleepy most days and the people around you want to sit and chat, participate in class activities, excel on that track field, or join the fun when for you, life is anything but fun?

If you begin to talk to people about sleep, you’ll find this reversal isn’t uncommon. Many find relief in third shift work.

Consider all the traumas and how they erode our teens’ minds, bodies, and souls, leaving them unable to sleep. Insomnia, when there is a significant concern with sleep, which includes difficulty in sleep initiation, sleep maintenance, and/or morning awakening in the context of adequate sleep opportunity, affects 20-25% of young adults in the United States.

It’s not just teens!! I know of a young child who as an infant would stop breathing at night and wake crying. It took months for professionals to diagnose that she had swollen tonsils, and then more time to get a tonsillectomy scheduled. I can’t help but think that she rises so early now because she maintains a sense of fear associated with sleep.

Consider all the physical and social traumas that erode our young people because they’re still unable to navigate explanations or maintain a sense of self-empowerment through these situations.

I feel like this is my columbus moment: a concept that is new to me about sleep, important to me now mostly because I myself so often can’t sleep. And, on the opposite end of the spectrum is the student I had who was diagnosed with narcolepsy. While this is a very rare condition, it seems to  occur earlier in African Americans.

As mentioned, young adults are likely to have a more limited capacity than older adults to develop appropriate measures which will among other things, result in better sleep.

As a teen, I can’t remember having problems sleeping, can you? The world is bigger than each of us individually though. We all have stories about sleep; about what keeps us awake, how we get our best sleep slumped in an airplane seat, and what our morning get up routine is like. In sharing these stories, we become community. In reading stories about sleep for teens, they begin to feel less isolated as they maneuver their days through the foggy, unsettled feeling of perpetual tiredness. They may even begin to find solutions that help them sleep.

Simply put: books with characters that explore sleep, please! Fiction, or nonfiction!

Be well, and do good!

Filed under: Requests, self care