If your teenage son or daughter is late for the school bus again, don't yell at them from the kitchen or complain all day long. Us teenagers' bodies are built completely differently to that of adults so we have a biological reason as to why we sleep late and wake up late.

    There is a certain 'darkness hormone' called melatonin that induces sleep in all human beings. As a person beings to grow older, this melatonin's levels are reduced which is why you might find that old age people may wake up a lot earlier than you'd imagine. This melatonin is like a sleep inducing hormone that releases itself normally at night times. This helps us go to sleep. For any adult, this hormone releases itself at about 10 pm. Unfortunately, for your poor teen, it isn't so.

    Teenagers only release this hormone at about 1 pm at night. This means that even if they try to go to bed, they don't feel like sleeping until quite late. This then has a knock on effect when they have to wake up in the morning. Think of it as an internal clock. Teenagers' clocks are set to release melatonin much late but what happens is in the morning, when it's time to get ready for school, the teenagers' internal clocks still feel it is night time which is why they struggle to wake up.

    A lot of people blame things like the availability of technology in the teenagers' rooms as a sign of sleeping late and waking up late. Things like TV, gaming consoles, iPods, mobile phones, computers etc are causing your teenager to sleep late but these are just ways that your teen uses to stay awake because he or she can't go to sleep. It is said that things like these cause the melatonin release to postpone itself but either way, a teen has just a different cardiac rhythm to that of a normal adult. Their sleep cycles are different and their need for sleep is more – up to 9 and a half hours.

    So don't bother blaming your teenager if you find they are sleeping in, they need it because they can't help it! Preventing it will just lead to a moody teenager. Some schools in America have set the starting time of their classes later so the teens can have a lie in and this has been proved to help them study better and perform better.

    Sleep is good, you know, so make sure you don't lose any sleep over your teenager losing a lot of sleep.

    如果你的十幾歲的兒子或者女兒又一次錯(cuò)過(guò)了校車(chē)，不要從廚房里向他們吼叫或者整天地抱怨不休。我們的青少年的身體構(gòu)造完全不同于成年人，所以有生物學(xué)的原因：為什麼他們睡得晚，起得也晚。

    有某一種稱(chēng)為褪黑激素的'黑暗荷爾蒙',它誘發(fā)所有人類(lèi)的睡眠。隨著一個(gè)人長(zhǎng)大，這種褪黑激素的水平降低，這就是為什么你會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)老人們可能會(huì)比你想象的要醒來(lái)得早很多的原因。這種褪黑激素就好像誘導(dǎo)睡眠的荷爾蒙，本身通常在晚上時(shí)間釋放。這可以幫助我們?nèi)ニ�眠。�?duì)于任何一個(gè)成年人，這種激素本身大約在下午 10 點(diǎn)鐘釋放。不幸的是，對(duì)于我們這些可憐的青少年，情況卻不是這樣。

    青少年只是在夜晚的凌晨 1 點(diǎn)鐘釋放這種激素。這意味著，即使他們?cè)噲D去睡覺(jué)了，他們直到很晚也不會(huì)感到像睡覺(jué)。然后當(dāng)他們不得不在早上醒來(lái)的時(shí)候發(fā)生一種敲擊作用�？梢园阉�想像成一個(gè)內(nèi)在的時(shí)鐘。青少年的時(shí)鐘被調(diào)到在很晚的時(shí)間釋放褪黑激素，但是事情的發(fā)生是在早上，在到了準(zhǔn)備上學(xué)的時(shí)候，青少年內(nèi)部的生物鐘仍然覺(jué)得這是晚上時(shí)間，這就是為什么他們要努力醒來(lái)的緣故。

    很多人指責(zé)在青少年房間內(nèi)觸手可及的技術(shù)之類(lèi)是睡晚起晚的誘因。諸如電視、游戲平臺(tái)、蘋(píng)果播放器、手機(jī)、電腦等，導(dǎo)致你的孩子睡晚，但是這只是你的孩子們用來(lái)保持清醒的方式，因?yàn)樗�或她無(wú)法入睡。據(jù)說(shuō)這些東西造成褪黑激素本身的釋放推遲，但是不管怎樣，一個(gè)十幾歲的孩子具有正好不同于正常成人的心臟節(jié)律。他們的睡眠周期不同，他們的睡眠需要更多的--達(dá)到 9 個(gè)半小時(shí)的時(shí)間。

    所以如果你發(fā)現(xiàn)你的孩子睡懶覺(jué)，不要打擾責(zé)怪他們，他們需要睡眠，因?yàn)樗麄儫o(wú)法阻止它！ 阻止它只會(huì)導(dǎo)致一個(gè)喜怒無(wú)常的青少年。美國(guó)的一些學(xué)校已經(jīng)把他們開(kāi)始上課的時(shí)間調(diào)遲一些，使得青少年們能夠睡上一個(gè)懶覺(jué)，這已經(jīng)被證明有助于他們更好地學(xué)習(xí)和更好地表現(xiàn)。

    睡眠是好的，你要知道，所以要確保你不損失任何睡眠，而不是像你的孩子那樣失去很多睡眠。