Is being a teenager THAT exhausting?!?!

[littlegreenlight1]

DD (16) is in the middle of her GCSEs.
I do understand that they are stressful etc and she is working hard (ish - def not as hard as she thinks she is) but having had one exam today, shes laid in the sun all afternoon (absolutely fair enough) then come in and gone to sleep on the sofa for the past 2 hours. Done no revision and no housework.
I am trying to go easy on her but find it very hard!! I will have to bite my lip for a few more weeks I think. Then she can clean her bloody room

[13Stitches]

Spirited can your mum recommend any reading to understand teenagers more?

Regarding the tiredness, when I was pregnant it brought back memories of teenage exhaustion. It was almost as bad as early pregnancy (but then, I'm a sleeper by nature)

[PaulinesPen]

My dd is the same. She sleeps for England. Or is wafting about. I can remember being the same though. I try to be more understanding than my mother was who had an earsplitting habit of vacuuming right outside my door to Make A Point and bashing the cleaner hard against it if she thought I was asleep or 'doing nothing' (ie reading).

[Fairyliz]

My daughter was like this for two years so I eventually took her to the doctors to 'prove' there was nothing wrong and get her to buck her ideas up.
Turns out she had an underactive thyroid. Left untreated she could have died.

[MadeMan]

To be honest, I'm late 30's and I can be the same as your daughter regarding sleep patterns when I'm not at work. I can't do the 'go-to-bed-at-10pm-and-wake-up-at-6am' thing; I just end up lying in bed most of the night wide awake.

Nowadays I tend to sleep in shifts of two to four hours throughout the day (apart from during work hours although sometimes I'll be yawning my head off at about 1pm or after I've eaten).

[merlehaggard]

I sort of get that teenagers might need more sleep, but I have had periods of sitting round doing very little eg over Christmas, and the less you do, the less you have energy to do. It is easy to get in that rut but easy to get out of it. After all, IMO there is no time for sleeping now because there are GCSE's to revise for. There is a long time for sleeping after. My 19 year old daughter has been spending 15 hours a day in the library revising for her 2nd year uni exams, knowing that when they finished, she was going to have 4 months off.

[MyrtleDove]

Hi, saw this on the discussions of the day. I was constantly exhausted as a teenager as I was actually pretty severely depressed, but it was put down to laziness. Please get your DD checked out at the doctor as all sorts can cause extreme tiredness, and it's one of the first symptoms of depression but it's often ignored in teens and put down to teenage hormones.

[Jenni2legs]

In high school I remember getting in from school and going straight to bed for two hours before getting up for the night. I also could eat half a loaf of bread in toast and jam, or half a box of cereal as a snack after dinner

[Everhopeful]

What's your mum doing differently with your youngest brother, Spirited? Am sitting ready to take notes for use on DD!

[Abra1d]

A word of caution--we thought our teenager was just tired with exam pressure. She has severe tonsillitis, possibly glandular fever and has had big problems sitting AS levels.

[MistressDeeCee]

Haven't really met a teen who doesn't sleep a lot. I used to idly study mine and wonder if they were incubating. Apparently there's a scientific reason why teens sleep a lot. So DD tells me, anyway

[deakymom]

wow my daughter is odd she is 14 next week does her chores and revises she does tend to sleep a lot but she is got out of bed by her brother at 7/7.30 every morning so she can't really!! perhaps its all the walking and her 8.30 bedtime?

[Spiritedwolf]

Everhopeful The example she gave me was that whereas she would ask me to do something while she was headed out of the door when she didn't have my full attention and then be angry at me on their return when I hadn't done it (I very often genuinely forgot or hadn't really registered what it was they wanted me to do or ran out of time to do it or did it wrong) - with my brother, she makes sure he has her full attention and generally asks him to do the things straight away while she is around to check its done. I don't think they take it as personally if he is distracted/forgetful etc.

I'm sure there's more stuff. But I think that I probably had/have undiagnosed Aspie traits which means I had particular difficulty in organising myself and remembering. Plus I was pretty stressed because my dad would usually pick fault in what I'd done no matter how hard I tried, so as a teen you get to the point where you just tend to just think, what's the point - he may as well be angry at me for not doing it as doing it wrong.

I think her point about the teenager brains is she now understands that when I said "ok mum" I genuinely meant to do the thing, but it was so easy to lose track of time or be distracted, my brain wasn't keeping track of the 'to do' list in my head the way an adult would - maybe?

[Spiritedwolf]

Yes to the other people who said to watch out for signs of depression - I guess the lines blur between 'typical teenage behaviour' and 'actually he/she seems to be having a problem coping'.

My mum wishes she'd taken me to the GP at the time for depression (any time she mentioned it, I took the "If you are THAT bad then you ought to see the doctor" as a threat and criticism to chivy me along, not a serious 'Do you think you need some extra support?' (which was what she meant!)

[nooka]

We use a white board for chores as otherwise ds (15) will always forget them. Works pretty well, he's much less grumbly about a chore of the board to do before we get home than if we hover over him.

ds doesn't seem particularly tired, in fact he is quite perky at the moment (end of school exams count for max 20% of year grade so not very much stress). dd is the one who gets over tired mostly because she has problems getting to sleep and also because she is a perfectionist. Last semester she got 'honours plus distinction' meaning that her average mark was over 80% in every course and she is currently stressing out because she'd probably only going to get ordinary 'honours' average B grade across the board. I love that she works hard but wish she wouldn't put herself under such pressure. I do worry about her health (she gets migraines when she is tired) and her mental health. I am very very glad that the school system where we are now is very very much more laid back than in the UK. I'm not sure how she would cope with full on exams,

[alreadytaken]

I recommend this book www.amazon.co.uk/Blame-My-Brain-Amazing-Revealed/dp/1406346934/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401520397&sr=1-1&keywords=teenage%20brain&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

Teenagers need to sleep and during exams I'd cut them a lot of slack. Just try to ensure they sleep. Getting some sun, when there is any, is good for them. Vitamin D is important for more thn just bone development.

[Littleen]

I think all teenagers are like this to some degree, perhaps it's the hormones racing around that does it!

[Charlotteamanda1]

Teens need a lot of sleep something like 10/12 hours a day. Also their body clocks change and their brains aren't ready for sleep till late at night and natural waking is later than us. Add stress of exams and they are totally exhausted.
Their brains are still developing. Let her sleep she must need it.
Mine started to come out of it at 18 but they are all different.

[JuliaScurr]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7932950.stm

we all know toddlers have different needs to adults; so do teenagers

[Bedsheets4knickers]

I remember 16-18 having a daily sleep. I'm 33 now but I remember it clearly .

[birdmomma]

I thought all the sleeping was just normal and teenage, but then I got my daughter tested for iron levels, and it turned out she was severely anaemic. She's back to her usual energetic self now. Worth getting all teenage girls tested for i think.

[Panzee]

I slept through most of my GCSE year. Turned out I had leukocytosis.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

I vividly remember falling asleep on my history books while revising. I can almost remember the pages I fell asleep on too, and that's a few decades back.

[jessieferguson]

My two have just crossed over to their twenties and one was prone, in the teen years before college, to anxiety which continued into college with several panic attacks. I feel the quality of sleep and the nutrition, or lack thereof, in their food is key to their brain health and ability to do their work.It is really hard to get them to see any cause and effect, however!

[comingintomyown]

DD is 15 and has a few days around her period where she comes in from school and goes straight to bed maybe emerging for a couple of hours then off to bed for the night. It does worry me a bit but I think it is hormones in her case and she's fine the rest of the month

[minimalisthoarder]

Isn't it amazing how they turn 18 and suddenly seem to be able to get by on 4 hours' sleep a night at university?

Or maybe not... that was when the afternoon sleepies first started to hit me, and I've been a nodding donkey between 2 and 4pm ever since. My A-level physics teacher used to throw chalk at me (it wasn't that boring, honest) and I used to sleep in the library, head down on the desk, a uni. Wish I could do that now! 15 minutes' power nap beats mainlining caffeine any day.