Helping parents figure that out with their teens in terms of how to set limits on those electronics or to have it be a healthy use in their home or in their bedroom is one of the first conversations I have with teens and their parents. I put it back on them. I talk about okay so rule number one is nothing but sleep in your bed. Where else can you do those things? I'll start with in their bedroom. Like, do you have a desk? Can you sit on the floor? Is there a different chair that you can use? Just getting them to move it out of their bed is the first step. Then, talking about the importance of that fall asleep environment. They can do those things, but then shutting it down before they decide they're going to go to sleep, rather than falling asleep with that happening.
Probably the hardest one is getting them to get the phone off or on silent so that those alerts don't occur throughout the night if they're getting a text or an email or something like that. They may not wake to it, but what I want people to understand is the brain is working all night long. It is picking up on everything happening around it. When it has to pay attention to the environment for TV or music or the cell phone then it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing while you're sleeping. Really trying to protect your sleep so that your body and your brain can do what it needs to do while you're sleeping.
