To dictate my 16 year old's bedtime?

[oscully]

My daughter goes to sleep at around 4am, wakes up at 7am, does her day at school, comes home at 3:30pm and then sleeps until 8pm and does it all over again.

I've suggested I remove her laptop/phone to which she laughs and asks me what the problem is?

I know she is getting older but she is still only 16 and at school.

She is a good student and does spend the time to revise for her exams, with a little bit of Netflix but honestly, I feel like an awful parent!

I wouldn’t like this or allow it
I have a DD16 who is doing exams
I wouldn’t feel confident that she would do well after 3 hours sleep in an exam
Also this is not a good set up for life, she would not be able to work in a job doing most hours a job entails unless it’s a nightclub!

Nah she'll learn it all herself. As long as there's food so she can eat well she will be fine. I'm 20 now and struggle to stay up till 10pm. I'm glad I stayed up when I could and I always enjoyed being awake when no one else was and I was the weird one writing my Shakespeare essays at 2am. I passed everything
I'm sure she will be fine
You sound like a great mum for caring though x

That’s a really rubbish sleeping pattern. She’s unlikely to be getting good quality sleep. Just catnapping. She needs to stay awake until bedtime! Why the weird pattern?

That sounds similar to my sleep pattern when I was a teen - I was at my widest awake at around 1am, I also managed to do my best coursework at that time. Body clocks can be all over the place at that age. As long as she's getting sufficient sleep overall to perform well at school I wouldn't worry too much about it, she'll probably adjust naturally back to a 'normal' sleep pattern by the time she's 18 or 19, I did. And I got straight As in all my exams.

While if I were you I would want to change this I wouldn't do it now.Let it go until the exams are over if she's revising well .
How did she get to this?

My dd (aged 15.5) has rubbish sleep patterns too. But she's a bit old for me to dictate lights off. She seems to manage ok. I advise her it's not good or healthy and encourage her to sleep better but i can't make her.

In all honesty a 16 year old is practically an adult so I don’t really think you can really dictate the bedtime. Having said that this is an awful sleep pattern and you need to put the evidence in front of her and explain everything to her.

I wouldn't like it but not sure how to tackle it. i can imagine how she's functioning at school on such short bursts of sleep.
Mine go to bed when I do at 10pm. They're not allowed phones in he rooms but they listen to music. So long as they don't disturb me then I leave them to it.

Good student, healthy, not getting into trouble, & doesn’t disturb your sleep? Doesn’t sound like something that needs to be changed.

I don’t interfere on weekends I could not care less, but I just tell mine to go to sleep in the week and they do. If they didn’t I would probably turn the WiFi off for a start

DD has a job now so knows the importance of sleep for that reason too.
She will nap in evenings from time to time

She's getting enough sleep overall it seems.
If she is functioning fine then why worry - you can't really dictate when she sleeps anyway.
Cultures where they siesta do something similar even though not quite as extreme.

If she is fit, healthy and coping with schoolwork then, let her get on with it for now.

It will have to change anyway when she's older

Honestly, that sounds like my ideal sleep pattern and one I'd thrive on. I did similar at Sixth Form/Uni and did well. As long as she's not tired what the problem? Not everyone has to be in bed by 9pm for 8 hours

Your house, your rules.

My 15 year old dd2 is like this too. Goes to bed at about 9pm, sleeps till 2.30am, is awake until 6, sleeps till 7.30, goes to school (mostly), has a nap when she comes home. It's weird. And now the exams have started so she's on study leave it's going to get weirder!

Turn the WiFi off. All this blue light is screwing up our sleep cues. Complete tech detox is needed

She's getting 7.5 hours sleep, so I don't think it's too far.2 sleeps a day is supposed to be the natural way of doing it I remember reading.,

My DS is in the same position - GCSEs and unconventional sleeps patterns. However from everything I can see he's getting a lot of work done and his grades are very good and have improved through Year 11 so I'm just letting him get on with it.

2 sleeps a day is supposed to be the natural way of doing it I remember reading.

I read that - DD1 has started doing it at start of secondary - earlyish night up a few hours in early hours then up at normal time. Moved bedtime back and her sibling started getting up loud at 6am so she started doing same and she stopped and started sleeping all the way through.