Speaker 1Whatever kind of day it's been, I'm honoured you're spending the next little while with me. Today I want to talk to you about something which might completely reframe how you see the mood swings, the meltdowns, the after-school irritability, and it all comes back to screens and sleep. I'm Dr. Mary Han. This is how not to screw up your kids. Today we're talking about screen time, but not the way you might expect, because when most parents worry about screen time, they worry about content, violence, inappropriate material, who their child is talking to. And yes, there are some real concerns there. What I'm going to talk about is different. It's a concern still, but it's a concern that underpins, I believe, all of us. It's a concern that underpins, I believe, all of us. working exactly as these platforms were designed to do. Hence why there's been a lot of research and a lot of this big movement about banning social media for children under the age of 16, because they just haven't yet got the mechanisms to be able to fight the algorithms of these platforms that are designed to keep sucking them in. That's the second bit of science. And then the third science is displacement. And this third mechanism really is the simplest. Time on screens is not time doing other things. It displaces them from doing other things. You know, it displaces them from playing outside, from reading, from having unstructured boredom. It displaces the natural wind down before bed. And all of those displaced activities are restorative. They help with that process. They allow the nervous system to down regulate and prepare for sleep. Screens, on the other hand, by their nature, they stimulate rather than restore, regardless of what they may well be told is happening. So for teenagers, there is an additional layer and that's biology. Adolescents experience a natural shift in their circadian rhythm of approximately two hours. So they're biologically wired to feel sleepy, later and wake later. It's one of the sort of bits of evidence that has been put forward for why teenagers and adolescents should be starting school later. What then, if you compound that biology with screens, that pushes the biological shift even further. So a teenager whose melatonin is already naturally delayed by two hours and then suppressed for another two hours by screen may not feel genuinely sleepy until one or two in the morning. Then they face a 6.30 alarm and then we get into this chronic sleep deprivation. So that's the science and that's the sort of what we're working against in lots of ways. So let me give you my five top tips, my five tools. Number one, the 90 minute rule, no screens for 90 minutes before your child's desired sleep time. So this is not the time that we know that once they're in their bedroom, it will take them then 90 minutes to fall asleep. But if we, if the kind of the bedtime in our home is 8.30, 9.10, whatever it might be in yours, then you just have that 90 minutes before. So not their bedtime, their desired sleep time. So if you want your 10 year old asleep by nine, screens off at 7.30. If you want your teenager asleep by 10.30, screens off at nine. And I know it sounds like a lot. Most families do find it harder to implement than they expect. And yet it's more effective than they also expect. So maybe start with 60 minutes. If you feel 90 minutes is impossible. Any reduction in the blue light window before sleep makes a difference. So you start where you're at. You know, if you've got a teenager who's got their phone and you're trying to battle already, just trying to get that phone out of their bedroom, then what you're going to do is you're going to start smaller and then you're just going to build up. Start where you're at rather than this is the number it should be at. And therefore that's where I'm going to go because you will make more progress, more quickly if you do that. Number two, charge phones outside the bedroom, not in a drawer, not face down on the nightstand, outside the room. This is one of the most consistently supported recommendations in adolescent sleep research. And the one that is most resisted by teenagers. And I hear it often, but my mobile phone is my alarm clock. There are other ways of doing that. If you go to see a doctor about sleep, hygiene, a sleep specialist, the first thing they're going to say is no devices in bedrooms. And that's for adults as well. And here's what the research shows. The anxiety of knowing the phone is there, even if the child doesn't check it, is enough to fragment sleep. Think about it this way. How many times have you set an alarm to get up? Maybe you've got a flight, maybe you've got an early train, maybe you've got something going on that's slightly out of the usual and you've set an alarm. How often have you found that you've woken up before that alarm has even gone off? Yeah, it's that because you've anticipated, you know, that there is this thing that's going to go off and you're just checking to make sure that you don't miss it. So it's the same thing. And that fragments sleep. The brain remains partially alert for your child in case of a notification, but us in case of the alarm going off. If we remove the phone from the room, the sleep quality does improve and often significantly. And within a week by an old fashioned alarm clock, if that is the objection, it costs four pounds. Okay, that's number two. Number three, build a wind down anchor. So what we want to do is replace the screen with something which actually allows the nervous system to down regulate. Think of the bucket. What are the things that are genuinely from the tap going to empty it? Now for younger children, they might need a physical book, journaling, music through speakers, not headphones with a screen, gentle stretching, whatever it is for them, whether that's journaling, whether that's writing, whether that older children quite like, maybe they really enjoy a bit of art, maybe they enjoy a little bit of creation that way, but help them find what their wind down anchor is. And if you get resistance, which you are likely to get, position it from a place of curiosity. I'm not telling you that this is what you need to do, but try different things and see what works. The key word is anchor because it's the same thing most nights in the same order. Predictability is enormously calming for the nervous system and also alerting to the brain. It's like, oh, this is the sequence that we go through in order to then go to sleep because the routine itself becomes the signal. And this is about the before we sleep. So build a wind down anchor is number three. Number four, reframe evening boredom as your ally. If your child or teenager complains that there is nothing to do in the evening without their screen, resist the urge to fix it, to find an activity, to fill the gap. Resist. Yeah. I know that that's something that we would typically want to do because we're sort of thinking, oh, 20 minutes before and what can we objectively give them? But actually boredom before sleep is restorative. It's part of that downregulation of the nervous system. An understimulated brain begins that natural process of winding down. The complaint there is nothing to do is neurologically exactly what you want to hear at eight o'clock. You can say warmly, but firmly, good. Let your brain rest and leave them to it or face the eye roll or a little bit of the emotional outburst. But we're doing this as part of a helping and supporting. And actually you'll see within a week what that does in terms of their mood and in terms of their decision making and impulse control. And after that, they will also notice that difference and they'll be, they may not necessarily be openly, oh, thank you so much for taking my phone away 90 minutes before. But if we establish that routine, if we are consistent in the application of it, then it's just part of what the, whatever other rules that you have, your non-negotiables in your house and in your family. So number five, run the one week experiment. So rather than announcing a new rule, so this helps you leverage it in and see how it goes, rather than announcing this new rule, which often generates resistance, try framing it as an experiment. And if you're going to frame it as a one week experiment, which is a really great way to start, then I would recommend that that becomes a whole family event. Because if you are part of the experiment, if you are also doing it, I think it just gives greater weight that this is something that we're doing for the whole family. You know, I love the whole, we've noticed that, we've noticed that we all get a bit, we're not always as fresh in the morning, where our mood is not always great. We're getting snappy with each other. And so we're going to try this experiment and we're all going to participate. I think that often positions it much, you'll get some resistance, of course, but you get less resistance when it's every single person. It isn't the one rule for them and one rule for you. And because you're modeling that, you can see the impact that it has on the whole family. And you're giving your child data to help them make their own decision with and help them see that. You're not punishing them. You're not lecturing them. You're inviting them into an experiment that the whole family are going to participate in. And many children, and particularly teenagers, are more likely to maintain a change they chose based on their own experience than one that we impose from outside them. So you start the week experiment, they will notice a significant difference. And we're not removing the phone entirely we're not banning them from the phone we're simply saying at 90 minutes this is what we're doing and we're all doing that and so when they see the difference that is much easier to kind of reinforce and there is a difference between my child uses a screen a lot and it affects their sleep and my child cannot function without screens and becomes extremely distressed when they are removed if for you removing or limiting screens causes rage withdrawal like symptoms extreme anxiety or significant distress that goes beyond normal protests this has moved beyond habit into something that warrants a deeper conversation about how you might then look to start implementing some gradual improvements here because we know that once the sleep is improved the whole decision making process gets better the thing that i want you most to take away from today is this you're not fighting a battle against screens you are trying to protect something which screens are currently encroaching on and that something is sleep sleep is the single most powerful tool we have for emotional regulation for mental health for physical health and academic performance in children everything works better when children sleep you do not have to do all the five tools at once pick one the 90 minute rule or the phone out of the bedroom run it for two weeks notice what happens come back to the others when you are ready and on monday i'm going to give you one rule for screens this summer that will not make you the villain it's simple it is effective and it works without turning you into the screen police i will see you then and if today's episode has been useful please do share every review and every share helps more parents find the podcast i'm dr mary hann see you on monday
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