“It seems unfair that the people who want to go to bed instead have to put the people to bed who don’t want to go to bed.”

This meme tends to pop up on my social media every few months, and each time it makes me laugh and enthusiastically nod as my youngest proudly declares “I am NEVER tired!” while all I want to do is take a long, quiet nap. I realize I am not alone in these feelings or experiences.

Sleep is a fascinating topic - on the one hand, there are those who ascribe to the “I will sleep when I am dead” mantra. They want to accomplish all of the tasks at work while spending all of the time with their family while enjoying all of the experiences in life. And on the other hand, we know that sleep is one of the most important and foundational tools to create a firm sense of wellbeing. And so there is a conundrum: If we sleep, we won’t have time to accomplish everything, but without sleep, we will not have the mental, physical and emotional capacity to do it either.  

We know that sleep is important for myriad reasons. Sleep helps our physical health, promoting cardiac health and regulating our blood sugar; supports our memory, allowing our brains to process information, while determining what should be kept and what should be discarded; and is crucial in making good judgments – less than five hours of sleep at night is correlated with riskier behavior. But perhaps most importantly in thinking about the kinds of human beings we want to raise, sleep is a critical factor in mental health.

On a personal note, I can feel the changes to my mental health when I am sleep deprived. I am more likely to get emotional when I am tired, whereas I know others who are more likely to yell and others who are more likely to snap. It is hard to be calm, kind and consistent when we are tired. A chronic lack of sleep can lead to anxiety, depression, and irritability. One study found that teens who regularly get less than seven hours of sleep per night are 68% more likely to have at least one risk factor for suicide, and some 85% of teenagers, according to the National Sleep Foundation, live with daily sleep depravation. As Christine Carter, the author of The New Adolescence writes: “sleep is, arguably, the golden ticket to happiness as well as the true silver bullet to success.”

But here is the thing - we can know that sleep is important, and we can simultaneously feel pressure to accomplish all of the things. I know I should go to sleep…but I also know I need to do laundry and pack lunches and finish that last email. A high schooler might know they should sleep…but they also want an A in math and to be captain of the debate team and they can’t do the work until after cross country practice. Or we know our little one needs 12 hours of sleep, but we also want to eat dinner as a family and we don’t get home from work until after 6.  We receive so many mixed messages from our culture, which tells us we should sleep but also tells us to prioritize achievement and productivity. These messages can be so strong that they can even elicit feelings of shame when we admit that we didn’t finish the work assignment or study for the test because we went to bed. So how do we reconcile our drive for productivity and the pressure for achievement along with our basic human need for rest?

As with anything, I don’t believe we have to think of these two competing ideas as an either/or. We can do both, as evidenced by the CEO of a major airline, who openly naps in front of his senior executives! Ultimately, our best chance at overwriting these messages from our culture is by establishing our own personal routines and habits -  because our brains are pattern seeking. We can do this in several ways:

• Plan: When there is a set evening routine, it can help everyone get to bed at the right time. This is true whether we are planning for our young children or for ourselves. Dinner must begin at 5:30 so kids can get to bed at 6:30, we make lunches at 9pm so that we can get into bed at 10pm.  By planning, we can complete the tasks we need to feel successful while still getting sufficient sleep. 

• Involve kids in the decision making: By the time we have middle school students, setting bedtimes is harder. While tweens and teens need only 8-10 hours of sleep each night, it’s harder to squeeze it into the time they have, as activities end later and homework lasts longer, and they still need to talk and connect with us. Our teenagers will not listen to our lectures on sleep, nor will they simply get in bed with a story and a song like our little ones, but they can take ownership of the process. Sharing with them how much sleep science says they need, helping them reflect on how they feel when they are properly rested, and asking them “so what’s your plan?” is often a way to get kids to make the same decision we would have made for them…but it’s theirs.

I don’t write all of this to say it’s easy or that it’s perfect. And yet I also know that prioritizing regular, full sleep is a gift we can give our kids, helping to root them physically and emotionally in a chaotic world.  And, as with anything, we need to make intentional decisions about bedtimes, sleep and evening routines. We need to ask ourselves whether it is more important that everyone gets to bed on time or that we eat dinner together, how each child can do the after school activity they want while still getting enough sleep, and how can we create evening and bedtime routines that work for each child’s sleep patterns. Because when we, and when our kids, get enough sleep, we are ensuring access to a tool that supports our physical, mental and emotional well being. Even if that last load of laundry has to wait for tomorrow.