#23 - Kids aren't born with a PDF manual. But here's a start...

Today I recorded a podcast with Dr Kathy Weston about teenagers’ sleep during self-isolation.

Yeah, OK. All you lot at the back. Very funny. Yes, we know a lot of teenagers were already self-isolating in their rooms - but you know I’m talking about the COVID-19 quarantine.

Kathy asked the question that many parents wish to know - what about the influence of technology. Interestingly, Kathy asked in a way that others haven’t. She was aware that the scientific literature on this topic was not straight forward (If you want to read more about this, here’s our blog on screens).

After speaking about the experiments we’ve done with teenagers in our sleep lab (eg, playing video games in the hour before bed), I summarised with a meta-analysis led by Dr Kate Bartel.

In a nutshell, the contribution from technology on teenager’s sleep was roughly 2%.

What was more influential were family factors.

Things like having a set bedtime for a teenager on school nights. Things like ‘family chaos’ - where there’s a lot of noise and commotion in the evening, lack of structure, and always ‘running behind’.

Yet, I mainly spoke about two biological factors that are even more influential than all factors combined. And for teenagers, the main one is their body clock.

Fortunately, we were able to speak about a few techniques that parents can teach their teenagers. Techniques that can help them fall asleep faster.

But when their sleep gets beyond these techniques - when they have trouble getting up and getting back to school, it’s time to call in the professionals.

We’ve been helping teenagers’ sleep - and in many cases - helping them get to school. But we could only help those who lived near our clinic in Adelaide.

So now we put all of our ‘teachings’ into a PDF manual - and called it TEEN WINK.

TEEN WINK teaches parents the tools to help their teen’s sleep.

It’s also a manual for health professionals who want to do what we’ve been doing for as long as some teens have been alive (15 years).

Listeners of Kathy’s podcast can listen out for the discount code for TEEN WINK. A saving of $220.

That means for a limited time, that TEEN WINK costs the same amount as a week’s worth of coffee.

p.s. But 7 days of coffee is a solution that lasts only a week …

p.p.s. WINK subscribers will be sent this discount code on the weekend …