Posted by deborah on August 11, 2000 at 11:24:01:

In Reply to: She needs help! posted by evi on July 26, 2000 at 21:51:06:

i had similar problems with my children and i honestly believe it is HABIT. once they start, it's hard to break. you're in a cycle. actually, the human body/psyche only needs 4-5 hourse of sleep at night and 3-4 hours of sleep in the afternoon. we FORCE ourselves to sleep longer than we should at night so we can stay up all day. once you start sleeping all night, it's hard to change to sleep 'naturally' and once you sleep all day, you would have to stay up a couple of days and nights to change the sleep cycle. it's not intentional habit, it's physiological habit.

my kids (now 22 and 23 years old) started this habit ironically with a church youth group who had weekend 'lock-ins' where they went to the ice skating rink and stayed up all night on weekends. (the youth pastor was trying to give them something else to do besides start partying at night) until then, i had NO problems with them sleeping at night. once they started this, they wanted to stay up EVERY night and sleep every day. i could say NO to partying all night, but it was hard to say no to the activities of the youth group, so that's how the habit started. it took MAKING them stay awake in the morning (go do something outdoors - hiking, shopping etc.) and relax in the afternoon, good, big meal, high protein, no caffeine and try to break the cycle.

if she WANTS to change the cycle, this will work, it she doesn't, if she wants to stay up all night and sleep all day - it will be difficult. she has to have a better reason to stay up in the daytime than she does at night.

i'll be looking for your updates!

deb

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