The Teenage Sleep Crisis with Heather Turgeon & Julie Wright (#94)

Today, Melanie welcomes Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright, marriage and family therapists and the co-authors of The Happy Sleeper and the forthcoming Generation Sleepless: Why Tweens and Teens Aren’t Sleeping Enough and How We Can Help Them. Heather Turgeon, MFT writes about child development and parenting. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, and she is a writer for The National Sleep Foundation. Julie Wright, MFT is a marriage and family therapist with an extensive background in infant mental health and early childhood development. She specializes in mindful parenting, sleep issues, and attachment theory. 

In this episode, Heather and Julie focus on the science behind the teen brain and why sleep is so important for development during their teenage years. They discuss the benefits of getting adequate sleep as well as the high costs of inadequate sleep. Heather and Julie share the optimal duration of sleep, the remodeling and pruning that occurs during sleep, the system of brain detox generated by sleep, and the importance of having time for all the stages of your sleep cycle. The costs of sleep deprivation are also discussed, and the role screens play in stealing sleep from our teens. Lastly, they share tips on how to build new routines of healthy sleep habits, build connections within the family, and ways they hope to create an impactful societal shift within the community.