Generation Sleepless

An intimate glimpse inside a silent epidemic that is harming teens, and a pathway for parents to help them reclaim the restorative power of sleep.

If you could protect your child from unnecessary anxiety, depression, and chronic stress, and foster a greater sense of happiness and well-being in their lives, wouldn’t you? In this book, the authors of The Happy Sleeper, the classic book on helping babies and young children develop healthy sleep habits, uncover one of the greatest threats to our teenagers’ physical and mental health: sleep deprivation. Caught in a perfect storm of omnipresent screens, academic overload, and unnecessarily early school-start times, our children are operating in a constant state of sleep debt while struggling to meet the demands of adolescence.

In this essential book, Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright draw on the latest scientific research to reveal that today’s teenagers are, in fact, the most sleep-deprived population in human history. In fact, at a critical phase of development, many teens need more sleep than their younger siblings — but they’re getting drastically less. Generation Sleepless guides families in building healthy habits around sleep by:

• establishing family agreements around sleep habits;

• altering family practices around phones, social media, and screen time;

• regaining overall equilibrium in the home; and

• remaking bedtime routines

Packed with years of research and in-depth reporting, Generation Sleepless is a wake-up call for parents that equips them with the right tools to start a family conversation about sleep and to ultimately regain connection with their tweens and teens.