Question
My 13-year-old son is having difficulty sleeping. He has been having a lot of trouble getting up for school and it has become such a stressful rush in the mornings. When we were chatting last week, he revealed that he often wakes up at night and then can’t get back to sleep. He says he spends “ages just lying there” worrying that he can’t sleep.
When he was younger he often had trouble like this and would wake us up – we would spend time supporting him back to sleep. Now he seems to be awake by himself – I feel bad that he is left alone like that by himself at night. What should we do to help him? What advise should we give him to get back to sleep?
Should we tell him to wake us so we can help him or encourage him to continue to do it by himself? He goes to bed at a reasonable time and is often very tired in the evening and is exhausted in the morning when he has to get up for school.
He has no screens in his bedroom and has a relaxing night-time routine as far as I can see.
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Answer
Many children and adults experience night-waking and disrupted sleep, which is not only stressful and tiring but also can negatively impact their wellbeing and performance during the day.
Many people go in and out of sleep throughout the night. They might wake briefly and then return to sleep easily, barely noticing that they were awake. However, others, once they awake, their mind can become active and full of worries and ruminations. There is a tendency for people to be more hypervigilant in the middle of the night – some experts see this as an evolutionary hangover from when there were actually more dangers at night. As a result, in the dark of the night, worries can seem larger than they actually are and this can disturb your sleep. Once you are agitated then it more difficult to fall back to sleep – the more you try the harder it can become.
Sleep is a passive process about relaxing and letting go – it is not an active decision you can make. Also, once you are awake for a short period “tossing and turning” then secondary worries about not sleeping can kick in – you can berate yourself with thoughts such as “Oh no, I am not sleeping, I am going to be really tired in the morning”. Such stressful thoughts just make sleep harder – this is vicious cycle of insomnia. Over time, just lying in the bed becomes associated with stress and worry and not restful sleep.
Helping your son
In thinking how to help your son, it is first important to get a full picture of his sleep patterns and what is going on for him through the night. It is great that he has started talking to you about his night-waking, so now encourage him to tell you a bit more. For example, it would be useful to know: What time does he usually wake up at? Is there a particular reason he wakes up? (eg worries or a bad dream, etc). What happens when he tries to get back to sleep when he wakes? Explore also how he falls asleep in the first place when he goes to bed. It is a good sign that he is able to do this, so do take time to identify the different sleep strategies he uses: what he thinks of, what position he lies in, how he relaxes himself, what props he uses. (such as reading, music, comfy pillow, etc). It is best to have this conversation during the day at a calm, relaxed time when you can work on solutions together.
[ Insomnia is no fun and I’ve tried everything. Even brown noiseOpens in new window ]
Make a plan for getting back to sleep
Encourage your son to make a plan for when he awakes. Below are some ideas that might help
1) Try his normal “fall-asleep strategies” that work when he first goes to bed
2) If after 5-10 minutes he is lying there awake and agitated, it might be useful to get up for a minute to break this pattern. Some people find it helps to read for a few minutes or to do some stretching. One teen I worked with found it useful to do a couple of sit-ups as means of discharging his stress and resetting his system. The key is to break the association of lying in bed with stress and agitation
3) If he has worries on his mind that are preventing his sleep, sometimes it can be useful to jot a few of these down on a note pad and then tell himself that he will deal with them in the morning
4) Once he feels a little more relaxed, then he can go back to bed and restart his relaxing fall-asleep strategies
5) Sometimes an additional prop can help, such as listening to music or a sleep meditation (you can put this on a device with no access to social media to avoid other distractions if need be)
What works in restarting good sleep habits varies greatly from person to person. The most important thing is to be compassionate and encouraging and to break the pattern of worrying that might affect him. For example, if your son lies awake worrying “oh no, I am not sleeping”, you can encourage him to replace that thought with a relaxing manta “oh, it is nice to be lying resting in my bed”. Patience and gentleness are key in building better sleep habits
Finally, you ask in your question whether he should wake you when he is not sleeping. You can of course give him that option for if he really needs to. But waking you up may increase the challenge of getting back to sleep (as well as being stressful for you). Also, I think it is a sign of his maturity that he is trying to deal with this himself – you can of course be a supportive coach for him during the day as he reflects about what he needs and comes up with a plan to manage.
- John Sharry is clinical director of the Parents Plus Charity and an adjunct professor at the UCD School of Psychology. He is delivering courses on Supporting Teenagers and Parenting Neurodivergent children starting on January14th and 24th, 2025, respectively. See solutiontalk.ie