KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Episode 49: The Importance of Sleep. A Conversation with Lisa Lewis.
What if your teenager could excel in school and be happier and healthier, all by just getting more sleep? Lisa Lewis, a renowned parenting journalist, author, and advocate for adolescent sleep, joins Kaity & Adriane to explore the importance of sleep for teenagers' physical and mental well-being.
Tune in to uncover how understanding and addressing the factors that impact teens' sleep can help them thrive.
About the guest:
Lisa L. Lewis is the author of The Sleep-Deprived Teen: Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired and How Parents and Schools Can Help Them Thrive. Her book is an outgrowth of her previous work on the topic, including her role in helping get California’s landmark law on healthy school start times passed. Lewis has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among others, and has appeared on the TODAY show, “On Point,” BBC World Radio, and local radio and TV in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere. She regularly presents to schools and other organizations about the essential role of sleep. A parent of two, Lisa lives in California with her family.
Connect
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
Important links:
• Connect with us on social
• Subscribe to The Sunday Spark
• Get our free literacy curriculum
Interested in starting a microschool?
Prenda provides all the tools and support you need to start and run an amazing microschool. Create a free Prenda World account to start designing your future microschool today. More info at ➡️ Prenda.com or if you're ready to get going ➡️ Start My Microschool
Sleep is so important when it comes to learning and memory. You think about. You know what are our kids doing during the day? They're in school, they're learning. Well, sleep is when our brains are processing all of that information and moving it from short-term into long-term storage and sort of figuring out which pieces to retain and integrating it with other information. We already know All that's happening during sleep.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling, the motivation, curiosity and mental well-being of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 3:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. Welcome to the Kindle podcast. Hi, Katie and I'm Adrian, and today we are talking about a very important topic.
Speaker 2:We're talking about sleep and the teenage brain. So I'm really excited to dig into this because I personally have had really bad sleep issues since I was like five or six. I can remember laying in my bed like every night, taking three or four hours to fall asleep, and that's not different for me. Now, as an adult, I just cannot fall asleep. And that's not different for me. Now, as an adult, I just cannot fall asleep. And sometimes I will go all night long and I'm just like laying happily in my bed I mean I won't say happily quietly, stilly in my bed, trying so hard to go to sleep, and I just can't get my brain, like whatever needs to happen in your brain to go to sleep doesn't happen in my brain. So I'm really eager to learn more about sleep and our brains.
Speaker 3:I am the opposite. I could. So in my house my kids are used to, I'll just be sitting there and it's getting late and they look over and I'm completely asleep Sitting up. I could be sitting like at a dinner table. I am the complete opposite. So there's probably some.
Speaker 2:That's probably not normal either. We're like the opposite ends of the spectrum. Every time someone's like what superpower would you want? Like I literally just say like I would like to fall asleep within five minutes. That would be my superpower. That would change my life radically. I've been having a pretty good run lately, though I don't know, I can't. I've never been able to figure out what triggers it. So maybe by the end of this conversation, yeah, all my kids are great, do your? Kids sleep okay.
Speaker 3:Don't have any problems. Yeah, and it was interesting. All my kids were really great sleepers until my son became a teenager. It's not that he's not a great sleeper, I mean he this Saturday he slept until one, 30 and we had Dean Burnett on and Dean told me to make sure I let him sleep. So I did not go in his bedroom and so I let the boy sleep, even last night he it's 10 o'clock at night and you know he does have ADHD and so the motivation, just like when we talked to Ned Johnson, he was like you know that motivation does not come until the, you know very whenever it's like really important. He had a project due today, so he decided to start a 3D print at 10 pm last night in his bedroom and of course it failed and he was up this morning like grabbing foam board and I don't even know what he was doing to um, I guess make something in the 25 minute drive to school. But I just kind of let him, you know, do his thing, so okay.
Speaker 2:So let me tell you about our guest we are going to talk to, lisa L Lewis. She is the author of the sleep deprived teen why are teenagers are so tired and how parents and schools can help them thrive. Her book is an outgrowth of her previous work on the topic, including her role helping get California's landmark law on healthy school start times. Past Lewis has written for the Atlantic, the Washington post, the New York times and the Los Angeles times, among others, and has appeared on the today show on point, bbc world radio and local radio and TV in Los Angeles, san Francisco and lots of other places. She regularly presents to schools and other organizations about the essential role of BBC World Radio and local radio and TV in Los Angeles, san Francisco and lots of other places. She regularly presents to schools and other organizations about the essential role of sleep.
Speaker 2:A parent of two, lisa lives in California with her family. Let's go talk to Lisa. Lisa Lewis, thank you so much for coming on the Kindle podcast today. We're super excited to talk with you. Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. So can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to the work you're doing and what's your big why? What change are you seeking to make in the world?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely so. I am a parenting journalist and I'm also a parent, so this specific issue looking at adolescence, sleep and wellness it's really an example of where those two roles really overlapped. A lot of what I've written about sleep being one of those topics are things that really sort of were directly impacting our household and my kids. I have two kids who my youngest, just graduated high school, and I've got two my youngest graduated high school, my oldest just graduated college and I've got two my youngest graduated high school. My oldest just graduated college.
Speaker 1:So my entree into this topic of teen sleep actually started when my son, the oldest of those two, was just entering high school, so this was back in 2015. So I have now been pretty much immersed in sleep for close to a decade, but at that point that was his freshman year, 2015. And our local high school started at 7.30 in the morning, so that was so early, I know. Believe me, it was such a change in our household as well, because it was the earliest, up until that point, he had ever had to go to school.
Speaker 3:Real quick. I just talked to a friend this morning and she said she started high school at 6.45 when she was in high school.
Speaker 2:That's insane. I think I win. I went to an additional class before school 545.
Speaker 1:That is brutal. That really is brutal. That's one of those things where, at some point, I feel like you just have to say stop, no, it's too early. Nobody should be up and having to function that early in the morning. I certainly am not a morning person. Maybe you were. Somehow you made it through, but yeah, that is far from ideal. To your point, though, those zero periods, which we can talk about a little bit later, are also such a huge piece of this, because it's not just what time the school day starts, it's then these kind of pseudo-optional, but then a lot of kids really feel like, no, they have to, so they can squeeze in that one additional class and before you know it, they are getting up, in some cases literally before the sun is up. So anyway. So in our case, the school day started at 730. And that was what propelled me into this issue.
Speaker 1:Looking at, you know why our high school started so early, and was this unique, and how long had this been the case? So, as I mentioned, I'm also a parenting journalist. I sort of put on my journalist hat and started looking into this, and what I quickly found out was that this was not a new issue. The research on teen sleep had literally been out there for two decades at that point, and yet there were still so many schools that were starting far too early. So, again, this was 2015. So that's the point where I got involved in this issue. But this research was already out there, but it was also hitting a critical mass. So my involvement really did, in retrospect, sort of come at a pretty opportune time, because the previous year 2014, was when the American Academy of Pediatrics had just come out with their policy statement on school start times, recommending that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8.30 in the morning, so quite a bit later than the 6.45 or the 5.45 that you had, katie. So that had just come out the previous year, and so really, there was this momentum starting to build in terms of the public awareness.
Speaker 1:At the time, I was sort of entering this conversation and I'll just sort of give you the quick recap, because it ended up being this long drawn out process but I started writing about the issue. One of the articles I wrote was an op ed that ran in the Los Angeles Times. It was called why Schools Should Start Later in the Morning. Ended up being read by one of our California state senators. Literally, he read it in the newspaper. It was an issue that resonated with him because he also had a high schooler. It was an issue that resonated with him because he also had a high schooler and he decided he wanted to look into the issue, introduce a bill on the topic, and that is exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:I got swept up in that two and a half year legislative journey. I ended up testifying in Sacramento and just being heavily involved Finally got signed into law, 2019., and then there was a three year implementation window, so then that law finally went into effect July of 2022. So we are just at the end of only the second school year that that law has been in effect Such a long road. Yeah, as a result of being involved in all that, I really broadened my focus on teen sleep, led to me writing my book the Sleep-Deprived Teen and really looking more broadly and continuing to look at all the emerging research, looking, obviously, start times being such a key piece, but more broadly, all these other aspects that are impacting our kids' sleep, looking at the ramifications, looking at ways we can help, and so, as I said, now it really has been close to a decade.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So when you were getting started, was it driven by issues you were seeing with your own kids?
Speaker 1:So it was an issue that I was seeing in our household. It wasn't that I wouldn't say that my son was being affected, you know, any more perhaps than some of the other kids, because I know there I absolutely was talking to other parents about some of the issues they were having to. You know kids who were chronically tardy, you know, trying to figure out how to deal with this, so it was something impacting me too, frankly. We had to leave the house at 7.10, but I could just look over at him in the passenger seat and see he was hardly alert, ready for a full day of learning. So I mean, that alone was enough, where it was just so immediately obvious. This was far from ideal, and so that was really what was my entree into this topic.
Speaker 2:That makes me really grateful for micro schools, honestly, because what happens with my kids in their micro schools? There's just we just start a little text thread with the guide and she just says what time does everyone want to start? And we all say things like 915.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is such a good point. Yeah, and that is and I mean I'm glad you brought that up, because that has been one of the issues historically with school start times is, you know, you are sort of beholden to whatever time your district has set, and in so many cases those are legacy schedules. Yeah, that were set decades ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and who's deciding? Who's deciding those schedules? You know, and like, where did that come from? Just the superintendent? Or I mean, like, who came up with such early start times for high schools, especially even like elementary Cause I know what the teen brain changes start to happen.
Speaker 3:I see it in my own home with my 14 year old, but with elementary kids too, like I. You know, katie has elementary kids and they want later start times. I have a son who's neurodivergent and he has what's called demand avoidance, so demands are really hard for him and I we noticed when he stopped having to wake up on someone else's time schedule and he can wake up on his own, it decreased so much of his stress and so he usually wakes up between eight30 and nine and he goes to a learning pod and then also he right now he has a teacher here teaching him and but he can wake up anytime he wants in the morning and then he gets his day started and I we noticed a huge decrease in stress. So it's not just the teenage brain, right, that this is affecting, it's really all adolescents and younger children, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:There's so much. I could say all about this issue, but I know we have so much to get into here. But I will say that I think that is such a fabulous point you brought up that when you're in a micro school environment you do inherently have so much more influence over things like the start time. So you aren't, your kids aren't sort of forced into this schedule that, quite frankly, we know now is unhealthy, is suboptimal. You know pretty much any. Any dimension you want to measure, whether it's, you know, learning and memory, whether it's emotional resiliency, whether it's mental health, whether it's sports performance I mean you name it across the board.
Speaker 1:Being sleep deprived has these very profound implications, and the start time is a key piece of that. Essentially, having an ideal start time is a necessary but not sufficient condition Because, as you well know, there's so many other things that can kind of impede our efforts to get to bed. You know it's sort of the you know, a healthy time, I mean for us as adults too. We've got some of those same demands the technology, you know, this feeling of needing to be hyper productive, same same sort of things that our kids are experiencing, but in a micro school environment you can at least not have a start time of 7am or 7.30am. So right off the bat you are setting them up, you know, at least to be able to theoretically be able to wake with a full tank, to be able to greet the day.
Speaker 3:So what's keeping you going doing this work? I mean, your kids are older, they're young adults going doing this work. I mean your kids are older, they're young adults. So what is your why, right now, that you're still doing this work? And what exactly do you? I mean, you wrote your book, but you speak like can you talk a little bit about that too?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely so I. The book came out in 2022. And, as I mentioned, what propelled me into it was this issue of school start times, so that piece is still very much an active opportunity we can call it, Because, as of right now, there are only two states in the entire country that have passed laws setting minimum allowed start times, so California was the very first. The second state to do so was Florida, and they signed this into law last year. It's got a three-year implementation window, just as California did, though, so that doesn't even go into effect until 2026. But you look at the entire rest of the country, obviously, and that's not to say that these type of changes haven't been made at the local level, because they absolutely have.
Speaker 1:The issue with that, though, is just one of scale. You know, when it's done on a patchwork basis like that, inherently it doesn't have the same broad impact, Like in California, for instance, public middle and high school enrollment is like three and a half million kids, so when you can do a change like that at the state level, you really are having a broad impact. So there's that piece, and there's still our districts out there even today, like Las Vegas and Nashville, that start around 7am or 7.05am mandatory first period. So there's that piece. But even more broadly, because I go in and talk all the time to schools that don't have these 7am start times. You know, I talked to a school earlier this year. They had a 9am start time and yet sleep is still an issue because of all these other things that are impacting our kids sleep.
Speaker 1:So so, in terms of why I do it, I think it's because I still see, you know, there's such an incredible need for this when I go into a school and sometimes we do a quick sleep survey ahead of time and invariably you see that there are still these various issues impacting kids sleep.
Speaker 1:And just knowing, you know, having been immersed in this research now, you know for closer decade, just knowing how profoundly that is impacting our kids, our teens, us as adults, the mental health implications, so that's sort of what propels me. I guess I've just become so much of a I hesitate to say the word evangelist, an advocate, you know, for sleep, and even for me, I feel like I've become so much more intentional about my own sleep as a result of all of this too, because it's so important for us as adults, as people who work with kids, who live with kids. If we have started the day with a full tank, it's a whole lot easier to interact with others, to parent, to be emotionally resilient, to deal with stress. So you know we all benefit from being well rested.
Speaker 3:Absolutely what you're saying really resonates with me too. My son goes to a school it's a hybrid model and so the middle schoolers start at eight, they get out at 1230. And then the high schoolers start at 1130. They don't have to be on campus, so it's a really late start and they get out at four and then they don't have school. Fridays are optional, but it is very heavy on a computer so that's still affecting the sleep. Just kind of what you're saying, which we'll kind of get into. So let's start with the importance of sleep. Why is sufficient sleep so critical for teenage physical and their mental health?
Speaker 1:I'm trying to even figure out where to start. So the answer is yes, it is so incredibly important for all of that. I mean you can start even with growth. Growth hormone, which, as the name implies, is responsible for growth, is released primarily when we sleep. So for our teens, who are in the midst of this tremendous physical transformation, that's when that part is happening.
Speaker 1:Sleep is so important when it comes to learning and memory. You think about, you know, what are our kids doing during the day? They're in school, they're learning. Well, sleep is when our brains are processing all of that information and moving it from long, from short term into long term storage and sort of figuring out which pieces to retain and integrating it with other information. We already know All that's happening during sleep. In fact, it was kind of fascinating. I spoke with a neuroscientist about this earlier this year. Kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1:I spoke with a neuroscientist about this earlier this year and his theory is that that may indeed be why we sleep is because our brains essentially have to go offline from getting all this input, as we're doing every waking moment, in order to be able to process it all. And so that is. You know, perhaps because that's still like the great mystery why do we spend one third of our lives asleep? Well, that is likely a key part of it. So there's that piece, mental health which obviously has become even more of an issue these last several years.
Speaker 1:For our kids, our teens, our young adults, sleep is so essential, just as a, you know, as I mentioned, starting the day with a full tank, a full emotional tank. It's so important for emotional resiliency, it is so important, especially for somebody who may have mental health issues, because when you're sleep deprived, it exacerbates all of those issues. So depression, anxiety, suicidality. So you know and as a parent, you hear that it just sort of you know it's terrifying to think about, but unfortunately, when you are sleep deprived, it actually studies have shown there's a dose response relationship in terms of sleep deprivation and the risk in terms of sleep deprivation and the risk in terms of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and even things like lowering the barrier for impulsive behaviors. So when you're sleep deprived, you are more likely to engage in risky behaviors, to make riskier impulsive decisions, and that too can have an implication when you're talking about something like suicidality. So I mean really across the board. It's just it has such a profound impact on pretty much every aspect of our lives.
Speaker 3:I watched a short video once and it was, you know, probably on Instagram or something, and it's talked about how, basically, when you sleep, it's like the brain's like washing itself. I think it was talking about neurogenesis and what you're saying with taking everything that's happening, all this input that we get, and then deciding, okay, what are we keeping, what are we getting rid of? And so if the brain doesn't get that time, then it makes sense to me why it's almost like I'm a very visual person, so it's almost like I'm visualizing like short circuits happening. You know, if it doesn't have time to, you know, basically wash itself so that it can start fresh the next day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's also another aspect, which is they've recently discovered it's called the glymphatic system, which is what they refer to as the brain's garbage disposal system. So to your point about getting rid of the byproducts, you know that have built up over the course of the day. So, yes, that absolutely happens during sleep. So it's fascinating, as I mentioned, you think, about one third of our lives asleep. How many hours that is over the course of a lifetime. And the research is still very much going on on all these areas of really continuing to discover more about all these key functions that are happening while we are sleeping.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my question is how long term are these effects? So, if I don't get good sleep throughout my teenage life, is that negatively affecting my brain long term? Or, as soon as I start sleeping, are those, like you know, risk factors mitigated?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. That's a good question. There are so many different impacts of being sleep deprived, so I think you know just to preface it with that I think when we think about the longer term impacts, those tend to resonate more when we are, you know, as adults, because you think about things like increasing, potentially, your risk for dementia or Alzheimer's or the role that sleep plays in cardiovascular health. You know, the American Heart Association I think it was just last year added sleep to its list of the key elements for heart health. Those are the kind of things, though, that I think resonate more for us as adults.
Speaker 1:When you are a kid or a teen, you're probably less concerned.
Speaker 1:You know about things like your dementia risk later in life, but absolutely there's an immediate effect on some of these other things we were talking about. For instance, if your kid or teen plays sports, obviously they're, you know, generally speaking, trying to perform at their best. Well, sleep has an immediate impact because it affects things like your coordination and your response time, and you know, along the lines of what we're talking about, how it affects learning and memory. So if you've learned certain sequences, you know, or some kind of you know along the lines of what we were talking about, how it affects learning and memory. So if you've learned certain sequences you know or some kind of routine you're supposed to execute, being able to do all of that is more effective if you've gotten enough sleep. And then the other piece, too, is that when you haven't gotten enough sleep it increases your risk for injury Because, again, things like coordination and response time are affected. So you know things like that absolutely you can see an immediate effect. So I would say it's both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, could you go a little deeper on like emotional regulation and impulsivity. That was really interesting to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, when you think about when we've had enough sleep, we are sort of better able to cope with stress, and that's just kind of across the board. There's another aspect here, which is related to the fact that our adolescents are in the midst of this major phase of brain development, so it starts roughly when they enter their adolescence, but this is a multi-year process that actually extends into the young adulthood, and it's focused on two main processes processes there's pruning and there's remodeling, and so, essentially, it's pruning away the excess brain cells, because there's a sort of an overabundance when the brain is first created, and then pruning away that excess allows the remaining brain cells to function more effectively. The remodeling has to do with strengthening the connectivity between the brain cells, but also between the regions of the brain, so this begins to happen, you know, at the beginning of adolescence, but goes on over this multi year, you know time period, as I mentioned. So what that means, though, is our adolescents are still like. Their brains are essentially still under construction. So, for instance, the prefrontal cortex, which is the part responsible for executive functioning and impulse control, etc. That is the last piece to mature. Because this happens, it sort of goes in a wave from the back to the front that the researchers have found it's fascinating. They can literally see that it isn't happening if we're simultaneously. That piece is the last one to mature. So we already have a fully mature prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1:So when we are sleep deprived, even though it increases, it's sort of you feel things more intensely, your emotions run hotter, but as adults we have that prefrontal cortex there to help temper that.
Speaker 1:Well, our kids and our teens specifically don't yet have that online to the same degree.
Speaker 1:I mean, they have a prefrontal cortex but it hasn't yet gone through that remodeling process.
Speaker 1:So in a sense they are even more impacted by being sleep deprived because there's nothing there to kind of provide that, that, that balance, because really you think about it, you're sort of out of balance. You know when you, if you have and it's the same when you think about the basics you know sleep, nutrition, you know all these things where you can function on an inadequate level of you know nutrition or sleep but you absolutely won't be functioning at your best. And then just to our adolescents have so much else they're going through at the same time you know the massive transformation that's taking place on the outside and then they also have that going on inside. It's sort of like when you think about a caterpillar, you know, getting to sort of cocoon and not have to be out in public while they're going through this transformation, whereas our kids are having to do this out in the world, and just how much they're going through on a daily basis, and then when you're trying to do that and you haven't gotten enough sleep, it just really is less than optimal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm kind of building this like image in my brain about I don't know. It kind of looks like the prefrontal cortex and some things like laying down weights on the prefrontal cortex, making it less able to do its job, and anytime we get less and less sleep, it's like more weights. And then you know you walk into a situation where you need to stay calm or you need to inhibit a behavior, and then you're asking that prefrontal cortex to do something and it just can't. It's too weighed down with all of this, you know stuff that hasn't processed. And then that's when we get the impulsivity and the emotional dysregulation and that are so stereotypical of teens. I think you know your typical grumpy teenager. Like they're flying off the handle or like it's like yeah, how tragic that we've actually kind of built this world for them that puts them in that condition. And then we like circle back and judge them for being that way. I'm like this is not fair.
Speaker 3:This is such a great follow-up to last week's episode with Dean Burnett, who's a neuroscientist, because we talk about all these same exact things and we talk about those grumpy behaviors or what is actually happening, and he right in the middle of the episode. So if you haven't listened, I would highly suggest listening to his episode with this one is he was like let your teen sleep. If they want to sleep until 11 am or 12 pm on the weekend, it's not because they're lazy, it's because their brains need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is such a good point because usually when I go out and speak I have a slide I put up about misconceptions, because that is one of the main ones that's out there that teens are somehow being stubborn, or by not going to bed on time, or they're being lazy when they want to sleep in. And it's not that at all. It's based on, you know, these changes that are happening and I'm imagining he covered this in his episode but the circadian rhythm shift that takes place as our kids enter adolescence it means they are no. Their entire sleep wake cycle shifts later. So when your kids are young, you know they are bounding out of bed, sometimes at the crack of dawn, and you're like, please, god, please, go back to sleep for just a little bit. And then, of course, they hit adolescence and it is the total opposite scenario.
Speaker 3:And you're like get out of bed. That is so funny. I never thought of that. Like I have so many moms right now with like babies and toddlers and they're they're not getting sleep because their babies are up in the middle of the night or their kids are up at 5am and they're just like, oh my gosh, this is so terrible. But then I have friends because I have a teenager and they're just like my kid never gets up. We can't do anything on the weekend. So that's so funny, I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 1:And when you're in those baby years and toddler years, it feels endless. You're like is this ever going to shift, you know, and yet it does so profoundly. So yeah, it is. It is one of those, one of those truisms. Yeah, Whatever stage you're in, you know, if you don't like it, just wait a little bit, because it's going to change.
Speaker 3:It's going to change Absolutely. So can you talk a little bit about sleep for resiliency? You mentioned it just a little bit ago and you know, I've seen it on your website and I know it's in your book. So what do you mean by that? When you say like resilient, like what does this mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this really, for me, goes back to the mental health piece, which really has been so profound, you know, as I mentioned, for all of us, but especially for our teens, these last few years, but it it affects all of our interactions. So I think of it to more broadly. When you look at, you know, the family environment where, if your kids have gotten asleep and we, as parents have gotten asleep, it sets the stage for these more positive interactions. It impacts your ability to deal with stress. But also it has impacts when you think about it in terms of, you know, in a school environment, because it's not just say the impacts on learning, but the ability to follow directions, the ability to get along with others. But the ability to follow directions, the ability to get along with others, and it's sort of how able you are to, you know, deal with all these little things that happen over the course of your day without being totally knocked off course. And that's where, as I was mentioning, it feels like for our teens, without this fully functioning prefrontal cortex, asking them to get by on too little sleep is something that is going to have more of an impact. So that's really what I think of is just in terms of what it means in terms of mental health. And then, more broadly though, the resiliency piece, you know when I was mentioning about sports, it affects your performance. It's such a key in terms of how you feel when you wake up in the morning even. I mean, I'm sure you've had that experience where you wake up after you've had a not so great night's sleep and just that feeling of not quite being ready to greet the day, versus when you wake up and you've had a really good night's sleep, you feel so much like you were just starting from such a better place and that colors unfortunately, like you know, it can really color, like all your interactions over the course of the day.
Speaker 1:So, when you were mentioning the high school that starts at what? Was it? 11 or 1130? Yeah, that's amazing, because in that case you know those teens really are able to, you know, ideally have a schedule where they are able to go to bed later at night, because they're not feeling sleepy until later at night, this circadian rhythm shift I was mentioning.
Speaker 1:Generally speaking, they're not feeling sleepy until around 11 at night and then, of course, in many cases they go to bed later because of other things they have going on, but this is tied to this intrinsic sleep-wake schedule the fact that melatonin, which is what primes us to feel sleepy, begins to be released later in the evening as our kids hit adolescence. It also doesn't subside until later in the morning. So that piece of oh, they're just lazy, they need to get up. Well, when you are asking a teen to get up at like 6.30, that feels in many ways the same to them as it would for somebody coming to us and asking us to wake at 4.30. I mean, they still have this melatonin which is priming them to still want to feel sleepy. It hasn't started to recede, and so their ideal sleep schedule is to go to bed later and wake later than for us as adults is to go to bed later and wake later than for us as adults.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and as you're talking, it made me think of, like, how important is autonomy over when a teen gets to sleep, because when you said, you know, the high school starts at 1130, but the high schoolers are allowed to get there as early as eight, but they have choice. They can get there anytime between eight and 1130. And so I'm wondering how choice plays into this too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. In general, our high schoolers, and specifically 14 to 18 year olds. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the recommended amount of sleep they should be getting is eight to 10 hours every single night variability. Most of our teens are going to fall somewhere within that, but there are going to be some outliers. So, and the same with you know I said, around 11 o'clock is when people start to feel sleepy. There are some people who are going to start to feel sleepy later. There are, of course, some people who have a delayed circadian syndrome, and that's something where you know if you're way off. That that's a different kind of scenario entirely.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, this idea of having some choice in the matter and it sounds like that also factors in heavily in terms of the micro school environment, where you know it isn't arbitrarily set at 7am because it was set that way decades ago that there is this ability to accommodate this different timing that teens have. So that's fabulous, and I do think it really. The other piece I've mentioned, though, is that it's also important to pay attention to other things that may be impacting their sleep. So, yes, they are biologically inclined to go to bed later, but there could be other things that are keeping them up much later, and if they're up regularly until 2am, you know, maybe that's not quite the ideal environment and maybe that's where you need to look at what else is kind of contributing. Is it tech use, is it homework, is it time management, is it overscheduling? So I guess that would be the caveat is just to sort of look at some of these other things too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how much homework they have and all the things. Like my niece, she has sports until nine, 10 o'clock at night and then she gets home and she'll stay up until one, two o'clock AM doing homework and then she starts school at seven, 30 in the morning. And you know and the parents are have talked to her so many times like it's okay if you don't get to your homework, but she's such a perfectionist that she's put all this pressure on herself and and then what's suffering is, you know, her sleep. What do you recommend for handling things like electronics or screens?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I concur with the recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics on this. They concur with the recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics on this. Their recommendation is to basically sign off of your devices an hour before bedtime. Now, that's the official recommendation. Having said that, I know you know, oftentimes it's easier.
Speaker 1:I thought it was a lot more so that's interesting, yeah, but even that can feel like a lot.
Speaker 1:So but I feel like it's so important to just know that's the official recommendation.
Speaker 1:So, even if you can't necessarily get there to an hour before recognizing signing off at some point you know, before bedtime maybe it's a half hour but really trying to kind of incorporate that into your wind down, which is another key aspect, which is essentially, you know, disengaging, whether it's from tech, whether it's from other ways that you're being productive, but having some time to decompress and to kind of make that transition.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I think is so important is really to look at having transition time between whatever we're doing in terms of being in our productive mode and being able to make that shift, to prepare, to be able to go to sleep. So, in this idea of a wind down routine is probably something that parents are familiar with from when their kids were little. So that whole idea of story time and having this kind of elaborate routine of we read these books in this order and and having it be this very structured take a bath at this time, exactly and that kind of structure is so important because it helps cue our brains okay, we're shifting into this mode. This is the transition time, so it's really that same process and it's and I should mention too, it's important for us as adults to having this kind of wind down time, because none of us can just kind of turn off our brains and just kind of lay down and, boom, go to sleep.
Speaker 2:Well, every so often I feel like my husband can, but I know I feel like my husband can too, and I'm awake for hours just thinking about everything and I can't turn my brain off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but this whole concept of a wind down routine is something that our kids, and particularly once they're hitting the adolescent years, can start implementing for themselves. So we're not going to go in and read them a story, but they can be reading and ideally it it's an old school book. They're not reading it on a backlit device. They could be taking a warm bath, they could be listening to music, they could be coloring. I mean, some people find these coloring books very meditative. It could be meditating. I mean it's whatever it is, that that kind of calls out to your kid, whatever it is that kind of calls out to your kid, to have them kind of figure that out and have whatever it is be part of this regular wind down routine, because that idea of regularity also is really powerful. So that would be a key recommendation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what about eating right before bed? Because I was thinking about my teenager's behaviors. What is his wind down routine? And it involves taking a lot of food into his bed. And so do you know anything about that? Like eating right before you go to bed? I think I've read before that's not ideal, but does that inhibit, like you know, your body from being able to completely shut down?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. I think I haven't looked at this quite as much, but I think it's sort of everything in moderation, right. So because of being able to digest food, you know, if you just had a heavy meal, that is not going to be optimal, probably for laying down horizontally and going to bed, so not like hot dogs and chips and all the things that he's taking into his bed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and yet, especially teen boys, they're growing at this exponential rate.
Speaker 1:So maybe getting him to eat a little bit more earlier in the day Sugar, obviously, you know later at night that's probably not so great.
Speaker 1:The other one I want to mention is caffeine, because that is such a key not really a nutritional aspect, but you know, it's something, certainly, that so many teens are consuming. I think I read 80% of teens are consuming some sort of caffeine, and it's not, like, you know, old fashioned cup of coffee, it's these energy drinks, you know, or it's these Starbucks frothy, you know, milkshakes. And caffeine has a half-life of five to seven hours. So meaning, after five, seven hours, half of it is still in your body, and caffeine actually blocks some of the sensations of sleepiness that we feel, and so that's why you know if it, when you are thinking about eating and drinking, you know what your kid may be bringing into the room and I absolutely want to be also looking at caffeine. And even if they're having it in the afternoon, there is a point after which it may be causing them to stay up later because they're just not feeling sleepy then.
Speaker 3:Wow what about lights.
Speaker 1:Light Absolutely Another huge one. In general, you want the bedroom environment to be dark, as dark as possible, you want it to be quiet, you want it to be on the cooler side. Light is, you know, essentially what cues us to feel alert. So this whole circadian rhythm that we were talking about, it's sort of the light dark cycle that we are cued awake by the morning light. The morning light that we get, the sunlight is our biggest source of blue light, blue light being the part of the spectrum that cues us to feel more alert. That's also the piece, though, that we end up getting additional doses from these backlit devices, just because the nature of how they're constructed and that blue light that is helping cue you to feel alert, not so great in the evening, because it can suppress the timing of melatonin, the hormone that primes you to feel sleepy. So there's that aspect as well to think about when you're thinking about light.
Speaker 2:So I'm like taking notes rapidly all these things so I can implement them. Are there any? You're kind of talking about optimizing the sleep environment, right? So darkness, quiet, like what are some a few other things that we might want to implement?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean those. They sound so basic and yet those really do make an impact. So so you start with that, because those are things where, generally speaking, you know and and I've found this too, when I go out and I and I speak at schools, and sometimes I've done these sleep surveys ahead of time you know what is it that's keeping you awake, making hard for you to fall asleep, and invariably there are kids writing this in. You know, yes, it's too loud. Or you know my, my parents, are listening to the TV and it's so loud and I can't fall asleep. So you know, you think of those as minor, and yet they absolutely have an impact.
Speaker 1:So some of those kind of things that are in our homes, we can hopefully adjust for. Things like TV volume. You know, maybe it's noisy outside and that you may have less control, or there's, you know, a light outside your window that shines in, or the full moon shines in. You know things like that. So that's where things like blackout curtains can be really effective. Earplugs you know even something like sharing a room. Well, if the kids have different bedtimes or things like that, that has the potential to impact. You know each other's sleep, so that's something like earplugs. So these, you know they sound like, you know, sort of straightforward and obvious and yet they're pretty quick things to implement that actually can make a difference.
Speaker 1:Temperature, you know this can be a factor. Certainly, if you're too hot or you're too cold, it impacts your ability to fall asleep. It might cause you to wake at night. So, you know, just looking at that actual physical environment is a key piece of it. Looking at sort of your, what else you might be doing to cue you to be feeling more alert at a time you don't want to, like caffeine, like blue light, looking at the sort of mindfulness part of it, like being able to wind down, yeah, so I mean, all of these can play an impact. So that maybe is the best. Advice is if you sense that your kid is struggling, is trying to look at what might be the specific things that are impacting their sleep, so then you can focus on trying to address those specific aspects.
Speaker 3:So I asked earlier about autonomy and choice and how important that is. So how do you think parents can strike a balance between enforcing sleep rules, because it is important, but they're also teenagers and they're going to be adults soon. So what's the balance between, you know, enforcing the rules and then allowing appropriate independence?
Speaker 1:Yes, such a good question and such a fine line. You know that we have sort of dancing on right as parents. I mean, this is sort of almost a microcosm, probably, of parenting overall. You know, because we are preparing our kids ideally to launch, go out in the world, be independent, be able to do all these things for themselves. So being able to manage their own sleep hygiene is absolutely part of it, but we're providing that scaffolding while they're learning those skills.
Speaker 1:So it's the same with helping them with their executive functioning. You know, particularly when you've got a younger kid or a kid in middle school, helping them plan ahead when they need to start their homework, when they need to do things, you know, eventually they've got to be able to manage that themselves. When they're off of college, you probably won't be there helping break their project into manageable chunks. It's the same, though, but it's the same with sleep, because something like, for instance, tech I mentioned. The recommendation is get off devices an hour before bedtime.
Speaker 1:Best places for devices at night is outside of the bedroom, some kind of central charging station. But these kinds of rules you can implement when the kid is in your household, but at some point they leave they have to be responsible for it. So it is this sort of gradual process where a high schooler is going to have more autonomy, you know, and so it just, I think, is part and parcel of that whole process of us helping them develop these skills, continuing to slowly exit, you know, sort of backing out of the room gradually as they get older, so that they are, you know, incorporating these into their own lives, so that it's more intrinsic, I guess, as opposed to, you know, externally mandated.
Speaker 2:It's. It's tricky because you can't force someone to fall asleep, right, you can't make them go to bed. You know you can. Like at our house I have a nine-year-old and 11-year-old and my 11-year-old likes to stay up really late and read, and so I've kind of taken the approach around like as long as you're in your room and you're not, he shares a room with his brother. So it's like as long as you're not inhibiting his sleep, like it's fine if you read as long as you want. And I've never like made him, you know I don't come in there and tell him that it's like lights out or anything, I just let him learn that. And then he'll wake up very groggy in the morning and the next night he's like I made a poor choice last night and I, you know. So he's like kind of be as an 11 year old, getting that experience to learn how to to manage that himself. And yeah, I mean it's inconvenient for us when he's grumpy and groggy in the morning, but he is seeing that.
Speaker 3:I definitely don't experience that. My son could do it over and over and over again. So what we do is in Ned Johnson and Bill Stickrood's book what Do you Say? There's like a whole chapter in there that was super fascinating to me because it was like kind of asking questions, getting first of all getting the teenager to come up with a plan. You can provide suggestions, like you use the word scaffolding, so it's like okay, I think that this would work better.
Speaker 3:We can also use a collaborative problem solving. It's like okay, I see that this is going on, what's up? And just you know, I see that you're taking like a whole meal to bed at 1030 at night. Well, what's going on, you know? And just starting to get them thinking about their own sleep habits, I've noticed is far more impactful and effective than just coming in and saying you have to be in bed by 10 o'clock. Because when I have a seven-year-old and we do have a bedtime, but also he has to be in his bed, same as Katie, it's like okay, but if you want to stay up and read, what about listening to podcasts?
Speaker 1:So it probably depends on what you're listening to, but there can be a lot of things out there that are relaxing, and the nice thing about listening is you're not looking at a screen, so you don't.
Speaker 1:You've eliminated that blue light aspect. The other piece, though, just quick to touch on when it comes to tech, is there's the blue light piece, but it's also what they're doing online. So so often what they're doing is engaging and stimulating and keeping them awake, as opposed to helping them calm down. So, assuming it's something on the more relaxing end, absolutely, and to your point too, you mentioned, you know, the book what Do you Say, which is fabulous, because these kinds of conversations they do shift and they do become much more I hate to say negotiations, but I mean they are much more sort of these ongoing conversations when you have a 15 year old versus a five year old, and so engaging them in a conversation, asking them, you know what they think, what they think are their concerns, what they think might work because, yeah, having their buy-in is probably going to set it up for success to a much greater degree than coming in and just trying to, like you know, lay down the law.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Okay. So we can totally keep talking about sleep. I know Katie would love to, so that she can figure out how she can sleep. Which Katie? I wrote down the delayed circadian syndrome. I thought maybe we can research that a little bit. I had never heard of that before. So this is a question we ask all of our guests. So who is someone who has kindled your love of learning, curiosity, motivation or your passion?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is such a great question, I have to say, and it really is in my case, I would say, my kids. They have been such a primary motivator for this, because a lot of what I write about really is parenting focus. Sleep, of course, was much broader than just that, because literally it affects every single one of us. That because literally it affects every single one of us. But so much of what I've covered over the years has been based on my experience as a parent, and so in this case I think that probably really would be sort of the root source of my involvement.
Speaker 2:I love that. I think that's so powerful. So how can listeners learn more about your work? So?
Speaker 1:I do have my book, the Sleep Deprived Teen, and that's available. I also have a website, so I use my middle initial, just because Lisa Lewis is kind of a common name, so it's lisallewiscom and I write a ton about sleep, so you'll see a lot of different articles there. You'll see more information about the book. You can also reach out directly. I love you know, always happy to answer questions over email et cetera.
Speaker 2:Love it. Thank you so much for coming. I've learned so much and I know our listeners, I'm sure, really appreciate all of your time and your expertise. So thank you so much oh absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3:That's it for today. We hope you enjoyed this episode on sleep of the kindle podcast. If this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at prenda learn. If you have a question that you would like to ask us, we will address it on the podcast. All you need to do is email us at podcast at prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group called the Kindled Collective and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Sunday.
Speaker 2:Spark. The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all of the ideas that we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. If you want more information about becoming a Prenda guide, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
