Adolescents need about 9 hours of sleep every night. Regularly not getting enough sleep (chronic sleep deprivation) can affect a teenager's academic performance, lead to more mood swings, a greater disposition to anxiety and depression and a lowered immunity. Even 30 minutes of extra sleep each night makes a difference.

Melatonin is a hormone that’s produced by the pineal gland in the brain and is important in helping regulate the internal body clock’s cycle of sleep and wakefulness. Being in bright morning light reduces melatonin’s production, making us feel awake, and increases at night making us feel sleepy. This is why it’s often called ‘the hormone of darkness’.

Your blood melatonin level starts to go up about 2 hours before you go to sleep. It helps establish the conditions for sleep and tells your core body temperature to go down slightly at this time.

Having the wrong amount of melatonin at the wrong time can cause problems with your child’s sleep. If your child has a late body clock (see below), their melatonin levels are too low at night causing your teen to feel awake and conversely too high in the morning resulting in a tired and grumpy teenager who doesn’t want to get out of bed. This is a bit like permanent jetlag. If this sounds all too familiar, SleepShack detects and corrects this problem.

Adults and children prefer to sleep at night and be up during the day. This isn’t due to habit, it’s driven by the body clock. Even if we don’t know what time it is, we still do things in cycles that go for about 24 hours and these are called circadian rhythms.

The cycle of sleep and wake is one of the most obvious circadian rhythms in humans. Sleepiness is highest at night and lowest in the day. At night, we get the best quality sleep, and the longest blocks of sleep without waking up. Sleep during the day is more broken up. It tends to be lighter as well. This means we sleep less. Melatonin and body temperature are also well known circadian rhythms and driven by the body clock. At night, core body temperature is low and levels of melatonin are high.

Getting these rhythms aligned with each other as well as the external environment gives your child the best chance for good quality sleep.

A common sleep problem for teenagers (occurring in 15% or about 1 in 6 teens) is the tendency to have a ‘late body clock’. Our body clock tells us when to sleep and when to be awake. Adolescents with a late body clock are somewhat paradoxically more tired in the mornings. This compares to tired adults who are more tired in the evenings especially after a busy and/or active day.

The colloquial term you might have used if your child has a late body clock is calling them ‘a night owl’ where they are wide awake late at night and very sleepy in the mornings. The medical term for this sleep behavior is ‘Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome’ or DSPS. If your child has DSPS, then it will feel like your child is permanently jetlagged. They’ll find it hard to go to sleep at bedtime as their brain is wide awake, and they find it even harder to get up for school as they’re melatonin levels are high (when they should be low). Delayed Sleep Phasing is one of the problems treated by SleepShack.

The teenage years are a time of some major shifts in the body clock, an internal structure that drives our daily rhythms. The body clock undergoes some important changes with puberty, specifically the timing of certain hormones change to cause the body to want to go to sleep later. So a ten year old may be sleepy and ready for bed at 9pm but at 15, doesn’t feel at all sleepy even by 11pm.

The hormone melatonin starts to be secreted as we start
 feeling ready for bed. Melatonin works with the body clock to help us fall asleep easily. From the onset of puberty this hormone kicks in at a later clock time than in childhood. Thus, young people who are past puberty tend to stay up longer in the evenings than they did when they were younger.

Snoring tends to happen when the flow of air out of the lungs and through the mouth and nose becomes disrupted. Snoring can be a sign of a more serious issue with blockages in these airways. This more significant snoring is called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and leads to your teenager feeling tired during the day, exhibiting behavioural problems, reduced ability to learn, minimised ability to retain information and leading to mood swings, depression & anxiety.

There are a few reasons that teens might snore to the point of having sleep-disordered breathing. One of the big culprits can be the tonsils or adenoids. If these become enlarged, they can interfere with the airflow through the throat, mouth and nose. Being an obese teen can also increase your child's risk of snoring or obstructive sleep apnea. Other risk factors related to sleep-disordered breathing are a small jaw or small airway, a family history of sleep apnea or a history of wheeze or cough at night.

Snoring in your child should always be investigated. If your child snores then you should see your GP about this issue who may refer you to a Sleep Paediatrician. The assessment of snoring requires a face to face consultation. SleepShack does not assess or treat snoring.

Many parents of teenagers complain about their teen sleeping in, especially on weekends. During a normal week, teenagers become more and more sleep deprived from Monday through to Friday. With no particular need to get up on a weekend, sleeping in till all hours of the morning or afternoon seems the natural thing to do. Research has confirmed that as adolescents get older they go to bed later, sleep less, and have very different sleep times on weekdays compared to weekends. The time of getting up on weekends can shift by one and a half hours in 12-14 year olds as puberty kicks in. Long weekend sleep ins are evidence of weekday sleep deprivation.

A common experience for teenagers is the Monday morning blues. This is in part because they’re back to school after the weekend. An additional cause is the shift in their body clock over the weekend; going to bed later and later on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, making an early get up time on Monday morning very difficult. Young people can be groggy for hours on a Monday morning because their body wants to catch up on its need for deep sleep. It’s like the spring daylight saving time shift, but it involves a body clock change of more hours and it happens every week. Interestingly teens with late body clocks are sleepiest on Mondays but those with insufficient sleep are sleepiest on Fridays.

Short answer – a lot! As your child sleeps, their brain pass’s through five stages of sleep. NREM (Non Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is made up of 4 stages and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is the last stage. Together, NREM sleep stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM sleep make up a sleep cycle. One complete sleep cycle lasts about 90 to 120 minutes. So during an average night's sleep, your child will experience about four or five cycles of sleep.

In the early stages of NREM sleep (Stages 1 and 2) your child will awaken easily and may not even realize they’ve been sleeping. During these stages, eye movements slow down and eventually stop, heart and breathing rates slow down, and body temperature decreases.

In the deeper stages (Stages 3 and 4) it’s very difficult to wake your child up, and if they are woken they’re likely to feel disoriented and confused. In NREM sleep your child’s muscles are more relaxed than when they’re awake but they’re able to move (although they generally don’t because the brain is not sending signals to the muscles to move).

REM sleep is more active. Breathing and heart rate become irregular, your child’s eyes move rapidly back and forth under they’re eyelids, and control of their body temperature is impaired so they don’t sweat when they’re hot or shiver when they’re cold. Below the neck however, your child is inactive because the nerve impulses that travel down the spinal cord to body muscles are blocked. It’s during this sleep stage that your child has their most vivid dreams.

REM sleep and NREM Stages 3 and 4 are the most refreshing of the sleep stages and it is this type of sleep that your child craves when very tired.

If followed correctly, the SleepShack Program will significantly improve the sleep of a child if they have some of the following sleep issues: they’re regularly unable to get around 9 hours sleep on school nights, cannot fall asleep till very late at night, its difficult to get your child out of bed on a school morning and they’re groggy and grumpy after wakening, they’re tired for most of the school day, your child sleeps-in on weekends & school holidays often till late morning, your child wakes frequently during the night and has difficulty getting back to sleep and has a late body clocks (i.e. a night owl, see explanation above).

The SleepShack Program is designed to treat the following behaviours in your child: poor academic performance at school, reduced ability to learn, reduced ability to listen & concentrate, frequent mood swings, negativity & anxiety, reduced ability to problem solve, problems with impulse control leading to greater risk taking behaviours and your child regularly using electronic devices (such as iPod Touch, iPhone, computer etc) immediately before &/or after bedtime.

SleepShack treats many but not all sleep problems. For example SleepShack is not appropriate if your child is a heavy snorer, has Obstructive Sleep Apnea (i.e. obstruction of the upper airway) or suffers from Periodic Leg Movements.

The Sleep Log is essentially a roadmap of your child’s sleep over a period of 3 weeks. It records your child’s sleeping and waking times with related information and can be filled in by your child or by you.

The Sleep Log allows your child to monitor when they go to bed and get up in the morning, how long it takes them to fall asleep and how often they wake during the night. It also allows your child to record any naps during the day.

The Sleep Log, analysed by Dr Seton, is a necessary resource in the diagnosis and treatment of your child’s sleep problems including circadian rhythm sleep disorders. In addition to being a useful tool for Dr Seton, a sleep log can help make teens more aware of the parameters affecting their sleep.

Filling in the Sleep Log will take about a minute or 2 a day and can be completed via the SleepShack website or via your mobile phone.

Research reveals a teen’s perception of their sleep deprivation is very low or non-existent. They lack insight into their sleepiness and lack insight into the effects this deprivation has on their daily life. Your child will thus need all your support and encouragement to complete the SleepShack Program.

Try to find something that individually motivates them (e.g. once sleep is improved they’ll perform better at sport or learn quicker or feel happier) and constantly re-iterate this benefit to them. Assist them in completing their SleepShack Questionnaire and remind them to fill in their SleepShack Diary. Once their Treatment Plan is ready, sit with them and together read through all the treatment information. Plus help them follow it every night and every morning.

SleepShack has been costed to ensure it’s significantly less than booking face to face consultations with Dr Seton and Dr Gamble. The price also reflects the personal time Dr Seton will spend in analyzing your child’s SleepShack Questionnaire and Diary and developing a tailor made sleep treatment plan. However if you prefer to see Dr Seton or Dr Gamble at their clinic, rather than undertaking the SleepShack Program you are most welcome to do so. Their contact details can be found in “Dream Team”.

Medicare does not currently support online medical services like SleepShack. However SleepShack will continue to lobby Medicare Australia to get approval for a Medicare Benefit and thus reducing the future out of pocket expense for parents.

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