Our Children Have Discovered Sleeping Late

Like Jim and me, Jordan and Jamie love to stay up late and watch movies with us, or not sleep when they are hosting sleepovers, so apparently there is a vampire gene.

On weekends and special occasions when they were little, Jim and I would allow Jordan and Jamie to stay up past their bedtimes, but we were always very strict about naptime schedules the following day.

Unfortunately, as most parents know, toddlers and younger children who stay up past their bedtimes do not sleep in. They rise and shine at their usual time, full of happiness and sunshine, and sometime between one and two in the afternoon turn into the spawn of Satan. Cranky, crabby, hissy and damn-near rabid, they are inconsolable until their sleep clocks can be reset that evening, or even during an afternoon nap if you are one of those lucky parents.

But this summer has marked Jordan and Jamie’s transition to tweenhood, with non-stop appetites, growth spurts, chockfull social calendars and internal clocks that seem to have switched overnight, no pun intended.

After years of being accused of laziness for the amount of time teens spent time in bed under the covers, studies finally revealed that teens’ internal biological clocks, or their circadian rhythms, temporarily reset due to a specific hormone release. This release of melatonin later at night during the teen years gears their bodies to fall asleep later and wake up later, making it difficult for them to fall asleep at a healthy and/or socially-acceptable bedtime.

I have always held the firm belief that your body will tell you what it needs if you take the time to listen, and Jordan and Jamie are generally tuned-in to how they’re feeling and what they need to do to be at their best.

Yesterday morning, they apparently needed more sleep than the usual hibernating black bear. Eight o’clock passed, nine, ten, eleven (?!), at which point I crept quietly into their rooms and checked for pulses and fevers: Both munchkins were out cold, and eventually staggered out of their rooms minutes apart just before noon, confused but very well rested.

Brunch waffles with whip cream and strawberries soon made their way to the kitchen table as we all sat and watched the early afternoon thunderstorm put on a lovely display of heat lightning and sideways waves of torrential rain.