14 yr old won't go to bed WWYD

[MorganTreeman]

14 year old son needs a lot of sleep in order to be ok the next day.
Always has done since birth.
Needs masses of sleep.
When overtired, he gets massively overstimulated, goes 'wired' and won't or can't sleep. Not enough sleep and he goes into meltdown.
He's the same now at 14 as he was at 3 months.
I try really, really hard with teaching him good sleep hygiene, getting into bed with enough time to read and wind down, before going to sleep.
All his life I've been strict about bedtime routine and I have had to be because a late night causes distress for him on some sort of neurological basis.
So now he's 14 and has started saying no when I tell him it's time to get into bed and start reading to wind down, ready for sleep.
No, no, no, go away, NO, he shouts.
OK, I say. Stay up then.
The next day, he is a wreck. Unable to get up. Unable to get ready for school. Late into school. Annoying his friends who he's arranged to walk in with because he doesn't show up cos he can't get out of bed. Eventually he does surface in a FOUL mood. As in me and DD run for cover. When he gets home from school, he's all over the place. Horrid mood. Snappy. Irritable. Bad tempered. Arguing with DD. Monosyllabic to me. Blanking me. Ignoring me. Ticking all over the place. Tap tap tap. Hum hum hum. Cough cough cough. He drains of all colour in his face. Goes white. Eyes like saucers. Dark circles under eyes. Yawning constantly. He's like someone who is delerious. This gets worse as the evening goes on. It's painful to watch my child like this.
Then we hit the same conversation in the evening. I tell him he's overtired. He argues at me that he's not. I put my foot down and insist he needs to relax and wind down and get to bed. He shouts NO at me multiple times.
I leave him and go to bed myself.
No screens allowed after 8pm BTW. So hes not gaming or on his phone. He's just zoning around wandering about his room dysregulated but refusing to go to sleep. The more overtired he gets, the more dysregulated he gets, and the more he won't go to sleep. He's taller than me, I can't put him to bed. It's like having a 5ft 9 baby who you're trapped in a negative bedtime cycle of overtiredness with.
Next morning, repeat. Can't cope with alarm, getting up, school prep, or the day.
When he does this on Friday nights and Saturday nights, it wrecks the next day. He either refuses to go out with us for family plans. Or he does come but ruins it with his appalling mood. Or he cancels his social plans with friends. Or he stays in his room all day zoning out doing nothing.
But. ....when on the rare occasion he admits defeat and actually goes to bed at the time i tell him he needs to (this is very very rare), after still arguing whilst his head is on the pillow, arguing how "stupid" it is going to bed at tgis time, I've timed it and within 3 to 4 minutes he is DEEPLY asleep. Sleeps through the night for 12 hours. Then wakes up smiling, happy, fresh faced, colour in his cheeks, good humoured, chatty, basically the boy he really is underneath the crippling overtiredness. Then he marvels all day about how good he feels. And the tics vanish.
We get to the evening, he starts refusing to go to bed again and we're back to all those symptoms again.
So what do I do?
Battle him over bedtime or leave him to it and let him suffer the next day?
He will not listen to reason when I try and talk this through with him when it's not bedtime. He's more stubborn than anyone I've ever encountered.

You sound tremendously over analytical.

He's 14. He needs to be able to work things out. You are infantilising him, and telling him you know him better than he knows himself. This may be true but it's bound to be a flare point.

I would stop turning this into a massive issue. I would give him advice and a reason and let him find out for himself. "My advice is, get to bed by 10 -11 at the absolute limit - on a school night. I have noticed how hard it is for you to function after a bad night's sleep". If he doesn't take your advice now, it will be there in his head to return to. A lot of teens work by being pulled in the direction of their parents' rules but not quite hitting it exactly. This is better for him than thinking he has stupid rules that he needs to break to be socially acceptable to peers.

If you treat him like a grown up by giving him some autonomy AND your advice, he will not be constantly having to rebel against your very strict rules. Being not at his best at 14 in school is pretty low risk and should give him time to work out that he needs his sleep before GCSEs.

I believe there comes a time where parenting moves in general to loving guidance rather than the imposition of will. You begin to reap the effects of having instilled good principles when they were little. They may wander off the path for a while but if the strong foundations are there they usually get pulled back in.

This is not true , she hasn’t left him to his own devices as she’s removed his phone etc at 8 pm . It is not normal behaviour for a 14 yo to be just wandering about his room aimlessly just to avoid getting into bed .

Yes that's why I said tend and not all 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Except "tend to" suggests a dominance, which I am disagreeing with.

I have a 14yo DS who’s similarly always been truly horrible when tired. It meant that when he was a young child I became hypervigilant about his bedtime / sleep quality, and this made me jumpy and over-controlling about it without realising. It became a self-defeating arms-race. Young children can sense our anxieties a mile off, and then they escalate accordingly.

Then they enter their teen years and start pushing back at boundaries (as is normal) and if one of those areas of parental rigidity is bedtime / sleep then that’s the main thing they’ll push against. It’s really quite obvious.

To sort this out I realised that I had to lead the diffusing of the arms-race: I unclenched, I reminded myself that he wasn’t going to die if tired, I made myself take a step back mentally from it, I started treating him as an almost-adult, I stopped hovering and micro-managing, and I enacted an air of faux nonchalance. This reduced the tension and meant that sleep stopped being the source of the battle ground…. It’s moved to the PlayStation and to lifts instead 🤪

Sorry I haven't read the full thread...I'm wondering if taking him off on a long walk in the evening would help?

I think your just trying to be argumentative tbh, I never said all I said they tend which is well known.

I just checked Google and the first thing that came up was this

An estimated 50-75% of adults with ADHD experience sleeping problems, ranging from
insomnia to secondary sleep conditions. If you have ADHD, you are more likely than others
to sleep for shorter periods overall, have problems initiating sleep and remaining asleep,
and you may even develop sleep disorders

( from the Berkshire nhs )

So, I was right..... they do tend to as it's 50-75% of people with adhd 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Scrolling through tiktok and endless messages all night is terrible for teens brains and mental health. Phones being shut off at night should be the norm, and adults definitely shouldn't be swayed by 'but all the other mums let their kids have phones all night!'.

I'm really not and the quote you provided doesn't support your origimaly statement, but I'm done now.

i know the op hasn’t left him to his own devices, Im saying that some others are suggesting she should but I don’t think that’s a good idea. He needs help.

Agreed but at 14 8 pm is quite early to go offline particularly when he may have friends who are still out at clubs etc at that time . I’m not suggesting he be on SM at midnight .

A 14 year old refusing an early bedtime is hardly a massive red flag though.

When hes as tall as the op and kicking off the next day and being a pain in the arse it’ll matter then lol……

It's not a "OMG he needs serious help" issue. It's a "fuck around and find out" situation on his part.
It's also very common. All 4 of mine have been through the "won't go to sleep then can't get up" phase.

Honestly from reading this I think it is likely he feels very controlled by your expectations and he is reacting to that in spite of your good advice. Teens just do not respond well to that level of control. What will you do when he is 18 still rebelling to this degree? Just send him to his room at bedtime with no tech.

My 14 year old is sent to his room at bed time with no tech except Alexa because he loves music. When he sleeps from then is up to himself.

You’re talking about a 14-year-old in a way that makes him sound like a toddler. I suspect his behaviour might be a reaction to you infantilising him.

At 14 he is hitting or about to hit puberty and it's normal for his brain to wake up in the evening - his natural rhythm will be to go to bed later and get up later. Obviously this doesn't fit in with society, but it's still how teens are wired.
Personally I wouldn't take his phone off him that early and wouldn't expect him to go to bed until 10.30/11ish if he doesn't feel ready.
I would tell him that it's his responsibility to get to school on time and that if it affects his attendance there will be a consequence (no phone again?)

I'd stop trying to make him go to bed and start making him wake up. 7:30am, curtains/blinds open, lights on. If there's a younger sibling, this is a good time for them to play with musical toys. Don't let him miss school. Go in every 30 seconds if needed and make him get up and ready. He might well have a terrible day, but that's the natural consequence of not going to bed.

@MorganTreeman I should also mention my son is diagnosed Combined ADHD and Autistic, as it’s been mentioned here a lot and it probably is relevant.

Op you asked about melatonin I think in response to a pp. It's the bodies natural sleep hormone, it's not a sleeping pill/drug. In many countries you can buy it over the counter. But here it's prescription only. Some people don't make enough of it naturally. It can help people with ADHD where the brain can't switch off to sleep. Magnesium is supposed to be helpful too for some people. I must say from your post I wondered about neuro diversity and if melatonin would help. He's probably not doing it on purpose.

OP, your OP screamed neurodiverse to me too, so I want surprised at all that others said he sounded similar to their DC with ND. Funnily enough, I'm fairly convinced at this stage I have ADHD myself and I know I have a sleep window at about 10pm where I feel sleepy, once that passes I'm awake until at least 1am. Better You sleep lotion is good and magnesium bisglycinate I find slightly helpful.

DS is 17, I often sit with him chatting until he feels sleepy. I doubt he's NT either.

Sending him to bed at 8pm at 14 is counter productive - let him stay up later and take the stress out of your evenings, because it’s bound to be winding him up and making it much harder for him to relax and drop off. He’s old enough to regulate himself if you stop micromanaging it.

My dd is 14 and can be like this. Sometimes she will be up for hours mostly screaming and shouting at me. Honestly, even if she’s calling me all the names she can think of, I give her a big hug, take her to her room and we sit on her bed until the red mist has gone. She has adhd and sometimes she just gets so overwhelmed by how tired and agitated she is that she just melts and goes to sleep. I’m not saying that your son will accept a cuddle or that it would work, but it’s an idea maybe.

Switch the electric off and pretend you’ve had a power cut

Leave him to
it and in time he will start to self regulate. Mine was similar we had one rule though stay up late you got to be up next day and not acting like an ass.