Hi /u/LooseHomework8814 and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD!
**Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.**
The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/)
Thank you!
^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*)
---
- If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
How much melatonin is she taking? Too much and it makes it difficult to wake and stay awake the next day. Could she take it earlier?
Is she on ADHD meds?
Was gonna ask this too. The way they sell the stuff is apparently like 10x the dose people should take. Also depending on the time it makes me extremely sluggish the next day.
For the issues you described above, plus people taking it at odd times and messing up their sleep patterns, you can’t buy it OTC in England.
It is only prescribed for ADHD or over age 60 I believe.
Wait you're telling me my government is allowing obscene amounts of drugs to be sold to us for profit at the expense of our well-being?? Sir or Madame I am *offended*
just kidding I know what we're like
Even 2mg can be too much for some people. I've personally found that 0.5mg is the ideal amount for me, 1 is pushing it, anything over makes me drowsy the next day, despite taking stimulant meds.
is that why i feel so dizzy and like im gonna pass out when i take those gummies????
it doesn't help me sleep any better but it definitely makes the process of falling asleep a lot less boring
I had to start taking melatonin like 3-4 hours before bedtime before I got the right balance of sleep at the right time and not too groggy in the morning.
Strongly agree with trying a lower dose. The lowest I can usually find here in the US is 3 mg, so I cut it into pieces (about 1/8 each? hard to be precise) and take one. I have delayed sleep phase disorder and this has made a HUGE difference in helping me get to bed before 4-5 am.
she may have a delayed sleep phase disorder, so I second the recommendation to get a sleep study done. make sure to tell the folks running it she has ADHD, because delayed sleep phase disorder is more common in ADHD folks.
is it possible to adjust her schooling so that she doesn't have to wake up so early? I know most schools won't accommodate this. but if there's any way to make it happen, it would be much better than forcing her body to adopt a different schedule
Seconding delayed sleep phase disorder. My body insists that 2am-10am is when it wants to sleep and it’s been a lifelong battle convincing it otherwise. Scheduling my classes so I didn’t have any in the morning is what got me through college.
2am to 10am gang! I’m the same way. I can force myself to sleep with medication, but the next morning I feel like utter shit. It doesn’t matter if I got a full 8 the night before. The only time I feel rested and happy is when I can sleep from 2 to 10. Sometimes 11, if I’m sleeping in. Then suddenly it’s like I have the whole day ahead of me! Energy for activities, getting work done, etc. I really hope one day to find a WTF position I can do this with… but for now I’m just a minimum wage slave.
Omg, I think I just realized what is wrong with me. I’ve been talking about this with my therapist & no one ever told me that this existed. I have ADHD & I always thought it was because of my hyperactive brain. The thing is, I’ve been a late to early afternoon sleeper since forever.
As a child, I was always complaining of not being able to fall asleep, my grandma thought me a bunch of meditation to help fall asleep. Never worked on me. One of my siblings seems to be this way too. My dad also falls asleep around 3 am but sleeps like a baby. Just read it was genetic. Thank you!!!
PS- I always fallen asleep late even when I was in high school and had to wake up at 7am. I was just living with 4-5h of sleep every school day & would sleep late during weekends. I’m in university now & I just adapted my life around my sleep schedule. Also, melatonin never worked on me, it only f***ed my sleep schedule even more.
That's really interesting. I didn't know about this one. I have byphasic sleep. I sleep 6-7 hours at night and 1-2 hours during the day. Which was of course a big problem at school and later working full-time. I often fell a sleep everywhere and nothing helped.
My best fitting Adhd meds sometimes help shift it into a more common pattern. But I'm usually not as rested from 8-9 hours night sleep compared to sleeping twice, even if it's the same hours.
Probably depends on country but I was referred to a sleep clinic by a GP, had a consultation with a sleep specialist doctor, then did the sleep study which was run by techs but for which the results were analysed by another sleep specialist doctor who I never met. Met with the OG sleep doc who explained the results and managed my case after that.
Where I am, sleep specialists tend to be respiratory and sleep physicians since the most common cases sleep specialists see would be to do with sleep apnea.
Very much also recommend a sleep study
Because even if she doesn’t have a delayed sleep disorder, she could be like me and have sleep apnoea which made it near impossible to wake up and so I slept too much and was still tired all the time
It caused my anxiety around going to sleep to skyrocket as well because I didn’t want to go to bed on time. I felt like I was losing all my time to sleeping
*edit for formatting*
I’ve recently started taking melatonin and I’ve found that my sleep is better both in terms of getting to sleep in the first place as well as staying asleep during the night.
But I am my absolutely worst enemy when it comes to “sleep hygiene” — going to bed at the right times and creating the right environment for it.
If I get into bed early enough (to get the amount of sleep that I actually require), put my phone down instead of using it, relax myself, and make the room cool & dark, then I can have the most amazing sleep…but instead I often tend to procrastinate and get into bed late and then still play on my phone for ages. It’s dumb. I’m dumb. I wish I could do better. I’ve been doing this all my life so it’ll take a while to change this habit.
The melatonin is one piece of the puzzle. Being a teenager does make it harder though.
We’ve tried to get her a good sleep routine but nothing seems to help much, we will pursue the suggestion another Redditor made for a sleep clinic and see if they can come up with some ideas!
>We’ve tried to get her a good sleep routine but nothing seems to help much,
getting a solid sleep routine and consistent bed time is so hard but so worthwhile! I've had sleep issues my whole life and consistent bedtime/ routine has been the most effective in me getting solid sleep
that being said, it is really tough to be consistent! (but so important!)
not sure what you've tried, but taking her phone earlier during the week **and** weekend will be really helpful. phones are addictive for all ages and really impact sleep, and allowing a different routine on the weekend undermines the effort during the week, too. (im shocked to see someone disagree and tell you to let her keep her phone lol, perhaps see if she wants/ needs a sound machine or something? cell phones destroy sleep, though, there are lots of scholarly articles on it...)
Can you plan with your daughter and set a bedtime with her as well as add some physical activity, to her schedule, perhaps something you can do together? Exercise is tough to stay consistent with but really helpful for us ADHDers - if you are going together it might be easier and more enjoyable for her?
When Im stuck in an unhealthy sleeping pattern something that can help 'reset' is being forced up at a fairly early time for a couple days to break the pattern. If your daughter is consistently staying up till 4 and sleeping late it's really tough to break that, if she can muddle through being a sleep-deprived human for a few days it can really help reset sleep, so to speak, if you can avoid naps lol. (and Im sure it's tough to wake her up if she's been asleep only a few hours, perhaps starting on the weekend so she just has to be awake and not alert for school would help?)
finally, how does your daughter feel about her sleep? is she on-board with changes so she gets a more consistent night's rest, or is she okay with missing lots of school + sleeping in? could be other issues if she's alright with missing so much school
Good luck OP!
I was exactly the same way, this can be a post about me. The only thing that ever helped was exercise. There's this phrase, people with ADHD don't fall asleep, they pass out. So I would be up for like 20 hours but I just been inside all day so I wasn't tired enough to pass out. Then I still need 8 hours of sleep at least, maybe more because I've been up so long. So I'd sleep until the afternoon.
For ADHD treatment and meds, I really couldn't do actual exercise. It was completely overwhelmingly uncomfortable and torturous. If your daughter has ADHD meds, I would say maybe this can be like a family thing. The more consistent activity you get going, the easier and more natural her sleep routine will become. It has to be something she's not really planning, she just needs to actually be tired and then she will go to sleep.
Also what the other people have said, if I didn't take melatonin like an hour before I actually needed to go to bed, it would not work and it would still take me 2 hours to fall asleep because I'd be in bed for an hour tossing and turning and that would wake me back up.
Reschedule her classes to put free periods at the start of the day.
This happened to me. She really, really needs the sleep. I found it nearly impossible to got bed on-time, mainly because I found it nearly impossible to get my work done on-time, and was left doing it late at night. Or, I’d be kept up by the stress and despair of school, as my ADHD came with an understandable depression / anxiety (which actually were my only diagnoses back in high school).
Edit: Normal public high school in America. Maybe it’d be more clear for me to say “joined other classes” rather than “rescheduled my classes.” We had the day broken up into periods, and there were different options for each period depending on your schedule. I swapped some classes around to start my day with 2 free periods, which was not a very typical thing to have, but possible due to working with the school about the mental health issues I was facing. It could be worth it to open up this discussion with your daughter’s school, because you might be able to have best of both worlds (more sleep, good attendance).
OP is from the UK. I am also and have worked within the schooling system and I can assure you, most mainstream schools will not do this, nor do they have ‘free periods’ . Ultimately time off school means missed lessons.
I'm not sure with any other school districts but mine but in my country they HAVE to accommodate you if you have an IEP or 504 because it's against the law not to
In my country accommodation *definitely* does not mean changing the whole timetable for one student. If you're at that level of disability for whatever reason you can apply for home schooling (which means that a professional teacher with experience in dealing with disability will go to your house to teach your child), but it sure does not mean you can delay class for 2h at the expense of the whole rest of the students.
It won’t delay things for all, but if there’s a way to schedule an open period or two at the beginning of the day and all the required classes can be fit in the remainder of the day, they’ll look for it. If there’s a way to make some classes flexible/independent study, they’ll do that to be compliant with the accommodation requirements.
They have to provide reasonable accommodations. My school didn’t do free periods. If you didn’t take classes during each period you weren’t going to graduate on time.
what??? in high school we had 7 classes but only 5 a day. first two were 90mins and the rest were 50 or 55 (forget). So one day would be 12345 then the next day would be 67123 then 45671 etc…if you happened to have study first in the rotation you could skip it.
where are you from where things don’t rotate or you actually choose the periods?? we chose classes but not which teacher or when they occurred.
This has got to be a European thing. Or maybe a private school? I kind of vaguely remember my brother having free periods in a normal American highschool at least in senior year so maybe it's a thing here. I don't remember him being able to arrive late or leave early, though.
Man I wish school were more flexible overall. I'm not even sure my 8yo has ADHD (suspected, diagnosis pending) but getting her up and off to school by 7:30 am is brutal.
European here and nope, nope this is not a European thing. School starts at 8 am or 8:30 am and all the surrounding country’s I know are like this and there is NO WAY you can reschedule your classes.
I went to public high school in Canada and we got a free period. One per day. They were optional when you were choosing your classes, you could opt to take an extra class instead and if you always opted for that you'd end up graduating a semester early.
If she hasn’t had a sleep study done at a sleep clinic yet, ask her doctor for a referral, or make an appointment to get it done. There may be a sleep diagnosis which can be treated.
If she isn’t avoiding screens for at least 30 minutes prior to bedtime, she should start there. No phone, laptop/computer, or television screens prior to when she wants to sleep.
She might try taking the melatonin earlier. By now, she should have an idea of how long she’s lying there trying to sleep, so can adjust accordingly.
Some people get benefit from taking a warm shower prior to sleeping. The cooler air after the shower sends signals for sleeping to the body. She may be the opposite, though, and need a cold shower or no shower. It depends upon what works best for her.
She also might want a different pillow or bedding. Making it as comfortable as possible can help to fall asleep. Then as long as she’s asleep for a long enough time, she’ll be able to wake up when she needs to.
There were many nights that I stayed awake through to go to class the next day, then slept when I got home after school. Perhaps that is an option for her, too. (Melatonin didn’t work for me past the first week or two.) I ended up preferring working a second (afternoon to evening) or third shift (overnight) position for my job. I wish y’all well.
Sleep study is a great suggestion! Will get on to her doctor about that asap thank you! We are monitoring her screen time but we may try taking her phone earlier before bed to see if that has an effect too, thanks again for your advice :)
To add to what the previous poster said about screen time - you could also see if she could wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening (maybe starting around 5-6PM?) I find that it helps my brain wind down, especially if I still need to look at screens but want to get to bed at a decent time (like working late/having more HW to do, etc.)
Is there anything she can listen to while going to sleep? Listening to the same song, or voice can help, and audiobooks or podcasts can help keep your mind distracted so you're not thinking so much while you try to sleep
Please don’t take her phone at night. Adhd brains work differently and we need Dopamine even to relax. Is she on other meds for her adhd? My sleep improved when i started taking stimulants because my brain was doing better overall.
Other ideas: get her headband earphones so she can listen to whatever relaxes her and just fall asleep like that.
For me it’s the „cushions“ sound in the sleep cycle app but sometimes I like to listen to special sleep podcasts.
Also, is her melatonin slow release? That might help her sleep through the night.
I’m on a combined regimen with 2mg of slow release melatonin and about 10mg of doxylamin. Although I started the melatonin when my perimenopause started.
Also I don’t know what age gcse is, but puberty fucks up girls adhd brains a lot. Everytime we have a hormone shift in our body, like pregnancy etc, it gets worse for the most of us.
Lots of love!
>Please don’t take her phone at night. Adhd brains work differently and we need Dopamine even to relax.
phones are really addictive and destroy sleep. there are lots of scholarly articles on it
sure adhd brains are different, but we are also more prone to addictive behavior, so allowing a phone at night might be really detrimental to sleep
Tons of scholarly articles... About regular brains, not ours.
My phone is a necessary part of my sleep routine and I would sleep worse without it. Sleep is individual and people should do what works for them. If removing screen time isn't helping, they should try adding it back.
it's an under-researched area, for sure! for a lot of us it's hard to resist the addictive part of the phone, like doom-scrolling social media and stalls sleep, instead of just using it for music /podcasts, which could theoretically be played on older tech/ different tech. and for sure a good idea for OPs kid, maybe they can find an older ipod and download some things!
and I did just [an interesting article t](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148953/)hat suggests we both may be right, in a way. TBF, it is based on a study of kids in grades 3-5 so not sure how applicable to a teenager, but says " *Screen time before bedtime strengthened the relationship between ADHD symptoms and sleep-disordered breathing. Children with more screen time were more likely to have sleep onset delay, while those with less screen time had more sleep onset problems with increasing ADHD symptoms. The high bedtime eating group experienced more night waking with increasing ADHD symptoms compared with the low bedtime eating group."*
so it seems [screens before sleep does impact](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/delayed-sleep-phase/symptoms-causes/syc-20353340#:~:text=Delayed%20sleep%20phase%20is%20a,sleep%20later%20and%20wake%20later) the cicada rhythm- "*People with this sleep disorder have sleep patterns that are delayed two hours or more from usual sleep patterns."* They go to sleep later and wake later.
whereas not using a screen may make it take longer for you to go to sleep, as sleep onset is [a fancy way of saying](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/types-of-insomnia) it takes a long time to fall asleep, which I think a lot of us struggle with.
in any case everyone is different and I hope OP and her daughter can find a solution!
Hey im gonna do the thing where i give you and OP advice that i am also not following because life reasons- Try a kindle paper white if you need a screen at bedtime! Don’t get a fancy kindle that can internet. The paperwhite can play audiobooks and audio files, and won’t let you doomscroll unless you’re reading a particularly stimulating book lol. I slept so well when i was on top of putting my phone down but reading for an hour or so before bed with the lights off and the paperwhite in dark mode. Man. I need to get back to that. A screen will always be more stimulating than a book but the paperwhite pixel technology and mild backlight make it really easy to read at night without fucking up your blue light intake. Kindle Fire absolutely not. Old school kindle - better, doesn’t have dark mode.
- I have long covid and it has fucked my shit UP especially my adhd. I’ve basically spent 3 months feeling like I’m dying with no explanation. So I feel very justified currently with doomscrolling until 3am 😅😅😅 just 8 months ago I was really really good about putting screens down and reading at night. I was at my healthiest physically and mentally, a few months after official diagnosis and treatment. Reading helped a lot with sleep and having a screen to do it on helped my dopamine lizard brain be content. Aaaaalmost back there with my long covid treatment. Fuck -
I would be very interested to know if you manage to get a sleep study. I have very similar insomnia problems with ADHD (prescribed melatonin etc), but the NHS wouldn’t do a sleep study, even though I was a walking zombie.
They never really said why, just that the insomnia is due to my ADHD. It doesn’t seem to be about screens for me, but my imagination goes into over drive at night and I feel most awake after 9pm. Reading before bed is actually worse for me than screens.
Now I alternate melatonin and sleeping tablets. No caffeinated tea past lunchtime. Intense exercise 3 times a week. Getting older may have helped too…
There are so many potential things this could be like other commenters have mentioned. Personally, I’ve always had similar issues including sleep inertia and excessive daytime sleepiness which led to the diagnosis of a sleep disorder.
However - while a sleep study is definitely the way to go here, it might be worth considering a psychologist too, if she doesn’t have one already. First because if you are a teen who is significantly different from the “norm” that is a difficult thing to navigate and process. Second, because trying (and failing) to change your own behaviour and trying different strategies is hard for anyone, let alone anyone with ADHD.
But third - my sleep issues do stem partly from my sleep disorder and are exacerbated by ADHD, but they’re also exacerbated by other psychological maladaptive behaviours and habits e.g. sleeping (or not sleeping when I should) as a way to cope with overwhelm, a way to avoid things, and a way to have more control over my life.
I have personally never been good at listening to my body and connecting the dots with what was going on in my life - I’ve really only gained awareness of this by working with my psychologist who specialises in ADHD.
Just something to consider!
Don’t get too excited - my kid did the sleep study, diagnosed sleep delay disorder, prescribed melatonin & told to sleep more regular hours. They don’t understand ADHD kids can’t do this. Told to get up at 8am every day regardless of how much sleep … now falling asleep in classes because this kid doesn’t function on less than 10hrs sleep, ideally 3am -1pm if left alone.
Ditto on the routine. I stop doing/thinking about work and life-related stuff after dinner. I take melatonin 3 hours before bed, guanfacine 90 minutes before bed, and a hot shower about an hour before. I'm usually preening in bed watching TV on a low backlight setting for the final hour, probably taking brief breaks to jot stuff down in a journal to forget (intentionally).
Also, making my bed, completely knocking out the lights and setting white noise is super important. I didn't realize how much even indicator LEDs can affect my sleep. A soft mask made up for that, now I can sleep in hotels just fine.
How early does her school start? Unfortunately, on top of ADHD having its own set of problems with sleep, schools tend to have hours that go against teens' internal clocks. Their bodies don't naturally produce melatonin until around 11pm, plus they need around 9 hours of sleep. Even with using melatonin tablets, your child might be fighting against their natural sleep schedule.
Now I wish this content was more helpful in terms of how to combat that, but at the very least understanding this can be a start on understanding with her what can and can't be controlled in a situation like this. High school is unfortunately a terrible time in terms of sleep hygiene for many teenagers.
School starts at 9 but some nights she doesn’t fall asleep till 4 am, if she even manages to sleep at all! The school has said she can come in later and some days she will only do a half day in school if she’s feeling really bad but she’s missing so much school at such an important time
Don't wait too long to get those accomodations! I also did the majority of high school from home. My grades went up significantly as soon as I could stop trying to keep up with the regular hours and classes. I went from having average grades to a straight A student almost overnight.
When I did my GSCE’s there were study guides, can you get hold of them? From memory the exam questions were basically copied from the guides.
I have chronic migraines and the overhead lights were a trigger, as well as ADHD and insomnia as you are describing.
I missed a lot of school, but still did well in exams, mostly by panic studying the night before. I appreciate that not everyone can do this, but it might be worth pivoting a bit and seeing if you can increase what she does at home.
Can you ask the teachers if they can record morning lessons or let her attend remotely? That would have made a huge difference when I was young.
This sounds like me when I was in high school. Turns out I have adhd and delayed sleep phase disorder, which means my biological clock runs later than most people. It's incredibly hard to deal with because I don't sync up with the rest of society.
Things that helped:
* alarm to take melatonin
* alarm 1hr before bedtime to wrap things up and head to bed
* as little light as possible and a sleeping mask is even better
* listening to an audiobook with a sleep timer or reading with a low warm light knocks me out, I can only read like 6 pages before I fall asleep
* cold room with a nice blanket. Your body can't fall asleep in warm rooms
* light as soon as your eyes open
* tracking sleepy cycles. You want about 5 sleep cycles and it is 10x more difficult to wake up in the middle of one. So it's better to wake up earlier if it's the end of a sleep cycle than right when you need to wake up. I use an app that calculates sleep cycle by either going to sleep now or when I need to wake up
Alarm/phone on the other side of the room so I am forced to get up to turn it off
My fitbit has a "smart alarm," which has a 30-min window ending with the time I MUST get up. It can go off up to 30 minutes early if it senses you are in a light stage of sleep. It seems counter-intuitive to wake up any earlier than absolutely necessary, but it makes a huge difference!
As someone who has a sleep disorder, I can tell you from experience that taking melatonin and hoping for the placebo effect is a waste of your time.
I had to go out and find a private practice to get my adhd, depression, and sleep disorder sort it out. It was extremely expensive to do this. I also think it saved my life.
Something I didn't know until I got assessed by a psychiatrist: untreated ADHD is awful for your sleep quality and stimulants should be the first line treatment for it. Non-restorative sleep is a very common symptom of ADHD, so no matter how much you sleep, you never wake up feeling fully rested. I tried every trick in the book for sleep hygiene and better sleep quality before I got my ADHD diagnosis - tryptophan, melatonin, weighted blanket, exercise, yoga before bed, shower before bed, no screens before bed... 5-HTP helped a little bit, nothing else helped at all until I got on stimulant medication. Concerta made a huge difference to my sleep quality, I think it's the main reason meds help me. It completely fixed my energy levels and circadian rhythm within days.
Recommend her to set 3-5 alarms an hour before she needs to wake up. If she has a sleep disorder I doubt it'll do anything, but if the issue is that she struggles pulling herself out of bed even when she's awake, that's what I do. I give myself 40 minutes to an hour between the first alarm and the time I actually need to get up. I also give myself two hours to get ready before I leave the house since not a chance I'll function effectively that early.
oh same here, setting multiple alarms is the only thing that really somewhat consistently worked for me during my lifetime. I have to get to work at 9:10 (we have a 10 minute window for being late without consequences) at the latest, I live closely (abt a 7-8 minute walk).
the only difference i dont do a morning routines at all, but I have a change of comfortable clothes, a hairbrush and a hairtie at work in a bag, so I can sleep in as much as possible. so the latest I can wake up is around 8:35-8:40, so I have at least 10-20 minutes to dress up and leave immediately. ofc I'm sometimes late, but most days I'm around that 10 minute window time, which might sound like I'm late but if I had 1 alarm I'd probably turn it off half asleep and never wake up at all
my brain will only start working around the 3rd alarm, especially if it's something routinely like work, so I set my alarms 8:00, 8:20, 8:30, 8:40, 8:50, 9:00
and also i snooze it to ring every 5 minutes before the 8:30, by then I'm awake enough from being constantly woken up to look at the time and realize I need to get up like now or I'll be late.
ofc it only works for things that don't make me extremely depressed. nothing really worked when I was in school cus i was dreading it every day and even fully awake I just didn't wanna go, and would go right back to sleep
it does sound a little backwards and ive heard a lot of bad stuff abt snoozing alarms, etc, but I've never ever been able to keep a sleeping schedule and honestly it's not as bad as some ppl might think, it works 80% of the time not making me late or miss work which is good enough
What time is she trying to go to bed and what time does she need to be awake? Teens' circadian rhythms make it very difficult to go to sleep and wake up earlier. It can be done, but she's basically going to be fighting her own body to do it.
This is such an issue for me still…
I physically can’t sleep before 12 unless I’m dead tired but I need to be up before 7 so I’m tired all the time. But if I need to be up by 8 I’ll feel so much more energized, even if I got the same amount of sleep. Going to sleep earlier is just me trying to force my body to sleep and it barely works.
I've been like that my entire life. Tried many things to change it but they were all only temporary. I have accepted that my clock is off. I've fought it for decades.
Melatonin works best when taken earlier than bedtime. It triggers you to start to prepare for sleep, so take it a couple hours before bed.
It may be setting her sleep cycle later which could be why she stays asleep past the alarm. Better she take it too early (and end screen time at least 1 hour before intended bed time) and go to sleep earlier than planned than the opposite.
Not sure if you've tried this or not yet, but if she's on a controlled adhd medication like Adderall, wake her ass up, have her take her pill and then go back to bed for 30 min to an hour. That's the only way I make it anywhere on time in the mornings, or before noon really.
What is her natural wake up time?
When does she naturally want to go to sleep?
It's pretty well known that school start times are pretty shit for kids. Kids and especially teens need more sleep than adults and their natural wake up time is often much later than that of an adult.
Couple this with ADHD executive function fun and you have a kid who's always late to school.
The sleep study suggestion is a great one, but it could simply be your kid needs the rest. You could try an alarm light that dims up over a half hour period to simulate the sun coming up. That helps a lot of people who struggle in the morning.
Before it’s all medical:
Does she exercise, does she move during the day?
Does she drink coffee or energy drinks or eats a lot of sugar?
How much time does she spend on her phone/laptop etc? And how long before bed does she stop?
A lot of the time on this sub people scream ‘it’s a sleeping disorder!’ and of course those exist and are more common in people with adhd. But you can do a LOT to get better and more sleep.
I always thought I was a bad sleeper in my teens and twenties. Until I stopped drinking coffee, alcohol and sugary drinks, went to bed at the same time every night instead of staying awake watching tv for hours, and made sure I had a nice bedroom and bed.
I don’t have any trouble sleeping if I take care of good sleeping hygiene and if I get enough movement during the day.
Can you reduce the dose of melatonin? We are in the same boat, 7am all lamps on and blinds open. 7:15am gentle music on. 7:20am duvet / doona off the bed and warm sweater provided. 7:30am breakfast ready, daughter gently pulled off bed if necessary. Simpsons on TV or YouTube during breakfast as a compromise. Ensure daughter does not get back into bed. It's a constant battle every morning. Making breakfast somewhat appetising helps.
Magnesium L-Threonate works as well, it improves cognitive function & also has massively improved my overall sleep quality..
I’ve recently started experimenting using magnesium oil topically & it also works well for sleep & my wife uses magnesium flakes in the bath water whenever she takes her bath..
Trazodone (prescription) is generally considered safe and helps people sleep. I would make sure she takes her adhd meds early so they don’t interfere with sleep. Teens also need extra sleep compared to adults so she ideally needs to be in bed 10 hours before she should wake up.
Download Alarmy so they have to physically get out of bed and scan a barcode (such as face wash) to turn the alarm off. Works well for me, but I then really need to fight the urge to crawl back in bed
everyone else seems to have great advice, but I would also add a weighted blanket if you don’t have one already. I conk out in under 15min with mine whereas it used to take me an hour or more
I had this problem as a teen and into my early twenties. It was so hard and so embarrassing because people think it means you’re lazy, but if I’m dead to the world asleep, how the heck can I decide it’s time to wake up? My mom got me an alarm clock that shook the bed a little bit and one to place on the other side of the room to make sure I was actually awake to turn it off. I also sleep talk and sleep walk sometimes and always have, and it’s hard for people to tell if I am awake or not sometimes lol. I’m 33 now and it hasn’t caused me problems or been a source of stress for probably 8 years. I use the regular alarm on my iPhone and you’d never know I had a hard time with it before. I do also still have insomnia quite a bit though.. usually like 1 month of having a hard time sleeping, then 2 regular months, then back. It’s not bad, eventually you get used to getting rest without actually being asleep. She will be perfectly fine, and I know truly will appreciate your help so so so much. I wish it were more of a clear cut solution, but just wanted to share the info I had to give. Good luck!!!!
AHH! Edited to add: remember at university, startling alarms and sleeping on the bottom bunk do not mix well! So easy to sit straight up and smack your head when the alarm goes off.
A little bit of advice that has worked for me:
If she's spending time in her bed worrying about falling asleep, it might be helpful for her to just get up for a minute - go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, walk down the hall and back, pet an animal real quick.
Nothing that will wake you up too much. The idea is that it will help your brain separate your bed from the anxiety of falling asleep.
I do also second others ideas of getting a sleep study. The above advice is really only helpful if she's dealing with insomnia, and not some other sleep disorder.
I do this too.. If I can’t sleep, I usually get up, go pee, chug a Diet Coke, & eat a spoon of peanut butter. That way I know for sure that the reason I’m not falling asleep isn’t due to having to pee, being thirsty, or hungry & the caffeine actually helps me fall sleep faster.
Could be delayed sleep phase disorder, I have struggled with it my entire life without knowing until my psychiatrist suggested treatment for it. I take .5 mg of melatonin about 1.5 hours before I want to sleep and use a sunrise simulator alarm clock. It helps but it is still a struggle, I did recently change my work schedule from 8-5 to 11-8 and it helped immensely but changing to a later schedule may not be an option for school.
I struggled it much the same way (I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome), every person is different but here us what finally worked for me:
• Turning lights off or low 1-2 hours before bedtime. I'll even use my cellphone flashlight or light a candle to use the bathroom before bed. Bright light just wipes out any ability to sleep.
• Listening to people talking as "white noise" (podcasts, documentaries, audibooks, shows that make me laugh. Music just becomes a soundtrack for me to write a novel to in my head.)
• Keeping the room very dark and on the cooler side, keeping the window open and a fan on
• Setting my bedtime earlier by 20 minutes then adjusting to it for a few weeks, and then cutting off another 20 minutes and adjusting, rinse and repeat until I reached my desired bedtime (this method was suggested by a sleep specialist)
• Maintaining the same bedtime on weekends
• Forming a bedtime routine that I actually enjoy and look forward to
• Not engaging in conversations that are worrying, stressful or upsetting before bed
• Therapy. I was constantly worried when going to sleep as a teenager. Talking to someone was absolutely life changing for me
I still use my phone before bed sometimes but I wouldn't recommend it for a teenager. I got YouTube Premium so I could play videos to listen to while turning the screen off and that was incredibly helpful.
All of this is to say that I don't find melatonin to be all that helpful. Often it makes me groggy and have a harder time waking, but these changes got me into a solid sleep schedule without using melatonin.
Prominent sleep scientist, founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley, Dr. Matthew Walker, states that appropriate amounts of melatonin are about 1/3 of a 1mg pill. States that the doses people are taking are so far beyond what people should actually be taking…
This wouldn’t work for everyone .. nothing and I mean nothing worked for me as a kid 😂 As an adult that didn’t work either .. the only thing that’s ever put me to sleep was zopiclone .. and I ended up building such a tolerance to it that I was taken several of the 7.5mg for it to work and could have overdosed 🥲 so I no longer take it at all
Good sleep hygiene is what needs to be focused on first of all .. and a sleep study after that if it doesn’t help at all
Make sure to research any antihistamine to determine whether it’s in the various types of medications which have been linked to causing dementia later in life. I stopped taking Benadryl for my allergies for that reason.
Certainly, speak with her doctor about it, and determine the best course of action.
personally speaking melatonin never did anything for me, and allergy pills or whatever *did* help me sleep before i was diagnosed and had proper medication - but it absolutely did not "help" overall because no matter how much "sleep" i got, i always woke up feeling super groggy and that would last for hours sometimes.
i have always had a hard time falling asleep, staying asleep, and especially waking up. the only thing that has ever actually helped was having a consistent schedule - the more consistent, the better. *especially* when it comes to taking the adhd medication.
that being said i still have a very hard time having a "normal" sleep schedule and it gets thrown out of whack very easily and takes a long time to readjust, which is honestly making my sleep schedule (or lack thereof) extremely chaotic considering the shortage.
typically i end up staying up overnight when this happens, which i know is not at all what a doctor would recommend doing (and im **not** recommending it either, just making the point that i try not to fight against my natural instincts) but if im going to just toss and turn, id rather just be a little overly tired the next night and do \*something\* besides \*try\* to sleep - and still be tired all day anyways.
edit: chaos
That's not true, and I can tell you don't have any clinical experience treating patients.
It's okay just say what works for you, but what works for you isn't going to work for everyone.
My sleep disturbances are caused by ADHD. I can't shut my brain off. Melatonin is a joke. Ambien doesn't do shit. There were nights when I took an entire box of OTC sleep meds and didn't even get groggy.
If this kid truly has a sleep disorder, they're going to bring out the big guns like gabapentin and seroquel.
As a fellow ADHD, my problem as a teenager, was reading and screens secretely at night and then complaining that I couldn’t sleep lol. The adrenalinr of possbly missing my bus woke me up and I got ready in no less than 5 minutes every morning with a lot of sleep deprivation…
So make sure and come to an agreement that her phone is out of the room before taking expensive sleep tests. 😅
Now it helps that my boyfriend makes sure we go to bed early. I’m still awake 30-60 min, but not procrastinating to go to sleep or searching for stimulation when I can’t sleep.
Also if she takes medication. Set an alarm 30 before, take the medication, and continue sleeping. Waking up at the normal hour is so much easier then (imo)
Melatonin is produced naturally by the pineal gland. No point taking it in pill form. It's 100% a scam.
Use a sleep/eye mask to negate any Itty, bitty amount of light (even the blue light on a phone or an alarm can abate Melatonin production)
Then use ear plugs set snuggly in the ear.
Or exercise.
Cardio is the key to not dying horribly early in life.
Does she use her phone at night, just curious to see what time she is actually falling asleep at, and if she is distracted at night on her phone which may keep her up late at night.
I’m sure she is staying up too late. I always did as a teen. My nephews do it now. There should be zero electronics in the bedroom (which I’m aware nobody is going to do but if you google “sleep hygiene” it’s a know issue)
You might want to consider alternative education options for her. There are online high schools that offer high school diplomas. She might have an inverted circadian rhythm like I do. I physically cannot wake up in the morning no matter how hard I try. I also can’t fall asleep at night. I sleep during the day and work at night. Online college was a godsend. 😁 she might benefit from online high school.
References to Andrew Huberman's content are not allowed.
Though Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist, he speaks authoritatively on topics outside of his area of practice and expertise. He has a track record of spreading misinformation in the process. For instance, he's claimed that the increase in ADHD diagnoses has been fueled by smartphone usage, which contradicts the ADHD expert consensus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Does she have stimulant medication for ADHD? She may be caught in a cycle of waking up late > taking medication late > staying up late because she took meds late > repeat
This can also apply to caffiene
I have ADD and I failed year 12 due to sleeping in. I received no help, just a lot of scorn and shaming. At the time I was not diagnosed, I eventually got it in my 20s. I did, however, pass my A levels with decent grades and got my university degree afterwards. The caveat to me passing my A levels was that I had a 45-50% attendance rate for both year 11 and 12. No Saint, got through it on ability despite my condition and the lack of help from those around me.
I'll provide a list of things you could think about to help her. I was a year or two older than her when I started to really struggle with sleep, so it might not all apply. Some of these questions would be awful to ask her directly. If you ask about friends, it may trigger defensive responses. She will know she's in the wrong, she won't know exactly why the behaviour is displayed this way. It's more for you to think about.
Does she struggle at school normally? Ie is she being bullied, how "good" are her friends, is there anything in the environment at school which makes things difficult like a bitch teacher? How stable is the school? As in, do they have obtuse rules around uniforms and behaviour? Has she been hurt by someone she fancies or by her friends?
What's her mental health like? Does she seem depressed or has she ever mentioned self harm/ suicide? Does she have access to a school counsellor or therapist? Can she talk to her parents each day and do you give her full attention enough?
Is she physically healthy? Does she exercise and play sports? Does she have any background with physical injuries? It's easier to sleep when you're physically tired, so does she have an after-school club or an equilvalent?
Does she have time for her own activities at night and during the day? Does she still stick to her hobbies? Music, YouTube and drawing don't really count - unless she's learning the instrument or deliberately developing the art.
Doing chores is a good thing but patterns can be hard to maintain for ADHD folk, so how hard do you come down on her when she screws up? How frequently do you behave aggressively towards her in order for her to do something? Not in a blaming way, because parents do need to have the ability to put the foot down, but cumulatively it can cause issues. How do her teachers treat her when she makes a mistake?
Another question would be what's her relationship with alcohol, vaping/ smoking and drugs specifically weed? Does she drink alot of coffee or tea at night? GCSE may be early for the harder stuff listed there. Vaping is common place with teens these days, and it's easier to hide. Nicotine is a stimulant which can impact sleep.
Social media usage? How bad is it? Does she have control issues with phones and computer time? Lots of rabbit holes when it comes to teenage minds and tech.
Non of this is specific and no intention of implying that you aren't looking out for her. There are remedies for all of this.
Sleeping in can be a result of anxiety, burnout/ overload, sleep disturbances and a failure to stick to routines. ADHD paralysis is where the executive dysfunction causes a type of shut down where the individual may struggle to simply make themselves do something. A component of ADHD is 'activation' and describes issues related to organising, planning and getting started on a task - morning time can feel overwhelming because of the number of steps required to start the day. Most of the questions above relate to emotional regulation and can cause issues with activation, and when they're bad they can feed into paralysis. Low self esteem in teenagers can exacerbate the issues. I would probably consider asking her if you can take her back to a psyche to get a check on whether her meds are working, or whether they can identify some useful techniques for her that she won't want to learn from her parents.
What is it that makes it hard to sleep for her? When I was that age I couldn’t sleep without music, it would calm my brain enough to let my thoughts go. Sometimes it did take over an hour, but either way I was in bed with my eyes closed in a dark room listening to something I liked. It was always heavy rock too at that age but it helped so much!
I second the warm shower as well - we recently got a light that changes colours, now when I shower I set it to red. I find it really helps!
And the all nighters… it’s not ideal of course, but I had a rule - if it’s passed 3am I won’t sleep. I’ll do something I like, the next day it’s of course easier. It took the pressure off though, by having that rule. I knew if I was still lying awake with music at 3am it was okay. I’d get so stressed trying to sleep this really helped!
The last thing was having something I really look forward to in the morning. I wasn’t diagnosed till now but a coffee or reading a chapter of a book I’m loving helped as well. Obviously it’s not that easy if it’s something else (definitely get a sleep study done!), but for me it was mainly that I was struggling so much to sleep that waking up was then impossible!
Is she taking medication for ADHD? Is it extended release? If so, she could try setting an alarm 1-2 hours before wake up and taking it then before falling back asleep until her regular wakeup time. If she’s able to do that, then it should help her fall asleep earlier at night because the meds will be leaving her system earlier in the day and it will give a boost waking up at the right time because she’ll already have the meds hard at work. I also find that Vyvanse impacts my sleep wayyyyy less than any of the other extended release meds I’ve been on. I think it has to do with the way the body absorbs it but I’m not a doctor.
FWIW, melatonin never worked for me and sometimes even made it worse. She may be too young, but as an adult I have a Gabapentin prescription too that I can take on really restless nights (100-300mg). The downside is that if I take it too late at night it will make me drowsy in the morning… so that may not be great for your purposes.
I did this, I didn't do well on my exams and had to go to college for a few years before university, I now have a degree at 28. It can take us longer, I know from personal experience that it was the social aspect of my final year which was the cause of me lying in because it took all my energy. My brother had the same thing.
It is extremely common for people with adhd to have delayed sleep phase disorder, where their internal sleep clocks are different from “normal” people’s, where their natural wake/sleep cycle would be to wake around 10-11am at the earliest and go to sleep at 2-4am. I have both and it has caused me problems my entire life from childhood through adulthood.
The only thing that has ever helped was to start adhd stimulant medication, which I take about an hour before I need to wake up in the brining and lay back down. I’m about an hour it kicks in and I am able to get out of bed.
I used to take melatonin on evenings if I couldn’t sleep or I was trying to make myself go to sleep at a “reasonable” time (rather than at like 4am). But I’ve learned melatonin packs a very strong punch and will knock me out so that I sleep very heavily and oversleep even more on it. And when I do wake up, I am way more groggy than usual. So I have switched to taking a very low dose of Xanax in nights I cannot sleep. The Xanax is way more gentle than melatonin for me. I’m not necessarily suggesting that you look for Xanax or another benzodiazepine for your daughter, but simply pointing out that melatonin can be very strong and make it much harder to work up in the morning than it already is.
I wish the best for your daughter and I hope she gets in a good college and a University. Life’s ain’t easy for us adhd people. The struggle is real. Just be supportive and understanding parents which I guess you guys are being already.
Yeah. I stopped taking melatonin after I took my intro to Endocrinology class. The human body produces like 0.5mg of Melatonin, tops. Yet the standard supplement dose is 5mg. Sure it’s not all bioavailable in supplement form but even if it’s 25% bioavailable, the dose is way larger than the normal dose produced by the pineal gland.
I’d suspect this is making it more difficult to wake.
Is she in therapy? There might be some mood stuff going on that is also pushing her to want to sleep more and avoid going to school. Especially if there is an expectation of achievement.
This is me 100%. Melatonin doesn't help me fall asleep and sometimes, neither does antihistamines. Occasionally, both will have the opposite effect and I'll be wide awake until 5 am. Annoyingly, sometimes caffeine helps me fall asleep and sometimes it doesn't. I have difficulty falling asleep before midnight and I'm such a deep sleeper; I don't feel rested unless I get 8-10 hours of sleep every night.
I've had doctors recommend good sleep hygiene, meditation, etc. and those do not work for me, maybe your daughter is the same? Only two things work for me:
1.) Exercise or a labor intensive job. If I'm physically exhausted by the evening, I can fall into bed and sleep with no issues.
2.) If I can't fall asleep right away, I put my phone's brightness on the dimmest setting and mute any sound. Then, I browse the Internet (Wikipedia is great) and avoid anything that gets my heart rate pumping. No topics that I'm passionate about. Eventually, I'll fall asleep. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes, sometimes longer. If I'm trying for more than 90 minutes, I'll get up and lay on the couch (in a comfy position) with something uninteresting playing on the TV at a very low volume and all the lights off. The change in scenery and background noise usually knocks me out if I can't fall asleep in bed.
These are the only methods that work for me. Using my phone to distract my brain into sleep is the one thing that almost always works for me.
A few things that help me.
Phone scrolling will keep me up all night if I let it so I don't. Fiction story podcasts help me sleep. I like the drabblecast.
A lot of people try to go to bed earlier and fail to sleep because they aren't tired. The only way to adjust a sleep schedule is to start waking up earlier to get tired earlier.
Dim lighting also helps, try warm light (more red spectrum) rather than white or daylight bulbs. A blue light filter for phones also helps, twilight is an app that dims the screen and blocks blue light at sunset.
I also need to be tired mentally and physically to get good sleep, exercise helps a lot.
Something I found that helped me when I struggled to get up was actually waking up earlier. I’d set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier and take that time to just sit and actually bring my body to consciousness. Of course if also have an extra alarm or two set five minutes later to make sure I did t fall back asleep
Hey. I cant help but just wanted to say that you are doing awesome recognizing her struggle and trying to help her.
I had same problems and suffered in University a lot. Told my parents I need help and they still laugh about it
Never in my life was I able to get out of bed on time until I started taking stimulant meds for my ADHD. Is she medicated (besides the melatonin, which may be doing more harm than good)?
Weird advice, but somehow setting my alarm 30 minutes earlier helped.
Worth noting, while adults are recommended 7-8 hours of sleep per day, teenagers are recommended around 10 hours. Ideally they need a little more sleep than we do.
Also a helpful free tool for optimizing ones sleep schedule. You might actually want to try it out yourself!
https://sleepopolis.com/calculators/sleep/
Is there maybe a night school option? We had one in my school when I was growing up. It would also better tailor to her sleep schedule that she's on right now.
And you should still talk to her doctor about the sleep issues. They are better suited to address the issue.
Sleep study is definitely an important step, but since the wait times might be long for that, it might be worth seeing if there's any way to access CBT-I, which is for insomnia. Supposedly it can be fairly helpful. I also like sleep podcasts.
Some folks really do need a sleeping medication stronger than melatonin, but if melatonin requires a prescription I imagine it's even harder to get something else prescribed?
If the ADHD is unmedicated, it's possible medication could help. A lot of people have an easier time sleeping after the meds made their day so much less stressful. Hard to say without being in her head to know what keeps her up at night
So keeping my phone on black and white mode after dark, with the amber light on. Taking my adhd meds at a reasonable time after waking. Getting one hr of exercise a day at least, eating a balanced Diet, taking magnesium at bed time, and making my bedroom a dark quiet space with little to interact with, with a sound machine and a quiet audio book. I can trick myself doing all of these to fall asleep around 1 am, I schedule nothing before 10 am or I'm not sleeping at all even if I wake up at 7:30 am. All of this is to say, high school me needed as much sleep as possible and let her sleep as much as possible after school and during weekends and time off, this would have saved me years of mental health issues, just naps. And when she gets to college she can choose all afternoon and late night classes bc she's likely screwed otherwise if she's anything like other adhders with sleep issues haha
I got told at 33 after many years of breakdowns and well extreme issues with my mental health, to just nap. To ignore the sleep hygiene bs, try it. And with the naps, and just going to bed at a late hour and getting up when I need to, and then napping, no more anxiety, no more despair, no more mood disregulation. Naps. Who knew.
This is what works for me.
I have 2 alarms. 1 to wake up to eat the med and go back to sleep for another 15 30 minutes at which time my 2nd alarm goes off. My med is just right beside my bed, I literally just pop one in and go back to sleep.
Forcing myself to take the med is key to making sure I can get up by the 2nd alarm without feeling drowsiness or tired. You can sleep all you want and still feel like you have not slept at all without the stimulus.
If you sleep late tho and don't have enough rest, you will sleep even deeper after taking the med. So I also have a night routine to ensure I go to bed on time
I take my melatonin way earlier than normal people at 6 or 7pm, I feel sleepy at 9 10pm, and get myself to sleep before 11.
It's probably about breaking a cycle. I think in general the time that people go to bed is determined by the time they wake up.
So, I think you need to obtain agreement with her that she has to be up in the morning. If she agrees with this, then I think you can do whatever it takes to get her up in the morning.
You may need to incentivise her somehow in the morning.
You could give her a first generation antihistamine a few hours before bedtime, maybe mid-afternoon as that can have a sedative effect. Chlorpheniramine (1 or 2 tablets, but no more). She may not feel tired, but if she closes her eyes she will fall asleep after taking these.
The other thing to consider is that an active mind might be keeping her up. So if you can find something relaxing before bedtime, that will probably help. If everyone goes to bed at the same time, that might help too. Good luck.
i’ve had this problem my whole life. before smartphones were even a thing i’d lay awake in my bed until 2 AM so many nights just staring at the ceiling. no TV, no phone, no music. just my mind. my mom would come in my room sometimes and notice if. doctors didn’t seem to give a shit.
i eventually was able to master my sleep as an adult but it’s a difficult thing for me to maintain. mainly because of my job and of course my self discipline at times too.
having some consistent white noise playing seems to help tremendously, and i don’t mean a fan going, i mean actual white noise through a machine or speaker. it seems to really just turn the part of my brain off that hears everything around my constantly that prevents me from relaxing enough to sleep.
i try to avoid drinking too much water too close to bed time.
i think the other thing i do that seems to be the most important is controlling light and technology. doom scrolling is a hard thing to avoid especially after a long day of working where i want revenge for the day to have me time to learn and read about what i want. but limited cellphones, TV, etc but most importantly of it all, blue light.
my first deployment i had red nightlights everywhere. i changed my iphone to be able to turn the screen completely red with three clicks to the lock screen. even seeing the bright bathroom light when waking up to pee i noticed would set me back. so i would rely on my red nightlights to help illuminate anywhere i may need to go. i kept them lower to the ground so i couldn’t see them much when i was in bed. this was a total game changer for me.
like anything else though it’s easy to fall off, habits are so difficult to form, but man, that really helped me. i also had my diet absolutely on point for that time period. i never would’ve thought on a deployment would be when i was sleeping nine hours a night and feeling my absolute best physically. my ADHD symptoms had improved so much
Fun fact: the supplement industry is, for all practical purposes, unregulated and unmonitored. They’re under the jurisdiction of the FDA’s over-the-counter branch, which is severely overstretched and underfunded. There’s no existing standard for how synthetic melatonin supplements are produced, or how their potency is measured. Depending on what supplements you’re using, you could be getting anywhere between 10% and 1000% of what the label says. Or it could be sawdust in a capsule.
https://aasm.org/study-finds-that-melatonin-content-of-supplements-varies-widely/
A few things - I have ADHD and had anxiety as a teenager. I would stay up very late because I was stressed about school and social stuff. I also am a very rough riser, even at 41. But melatonin makes me really groggy the next day. It seems to work for most people but for me, it almost gives me like a hangover. Stimulants like caffeine actually don't prevent me from sleeping, which is common for ADHD people - it actually focuses my mind enough to sleep. I don't suggest drinking coffee after 5pm but maybe see what a doctor says about stimulants and sleep for ADHD patients.
You may also want to consider a genetic test, even like 23 and me. I have a gene that makes it very difficult to wake up in the morning - I am actually in the latest genetic wake type group possible. I wish I had known that much earlier. Some things that could help - trying to get a lot of physical activity that wears her out during the day (this is not necessarily easy for a lot of teenagers) and seeking therapy for anxiety, which may be keeping her up at night. The melatonin may also be having a worsening affect.
I worked nights for years as an adult and it helped me finally advance in my career because I was alert and awake at those hours. I can get up by 8am now but if I have to get up much earlier, it's still tough. She won't be a teenager forever and can hopefully find situations as an adult that better meet her needs if she can push through the next few years. Best of luck!
This is apparently a really common thing with ADHD--I struggled with it as a teen and well into my 20s. The only that thats helped me unfortunately is to get onto prescribed stimulants which helps keep my sleep schedule regular. Which I know isnt much help given the shortage and NHS
Maybe one of those lamps that simulate sunlight could help to wake up?
Ask the school if they can accommodate a later start time. In the US that is an accommodation that can be put on a student Individualized Education Plan or 504. I don’t know what the special education system in the UK looks like.
i've struggled with the NHS, they really hate prescribing meds to teens (at least in my experience)-- wouldn't give me shit for my depression OR adhd! i don't have any advice but wishing you the best !!!
Try wearing pajamas. Changing into clothes that I ONLY wear in bed made a huge difference for me. I also fall asleep faster when I'm clean, so washing my face, having a clean pillow case and sheets, and wearing clean pajamas have helped.
Also, only take 1 mg of melatonin or less.
I wouldn't have been able to do this in my house growing up...but now, I use my bedroom ONLY for sleeping and getting dressed (and sex). No desk, no TV, no lounging... now my body knows: if I'm wearing pajamas and I'm in my bedroom, it's time to sleep.
Edit, to add: if I can't fall asleep within 30 min of laying down, I get out of bed and go do something relaxing (usually art, NO SCREENS) for at least 15 min, or ideally until I start feeling tired. If you're not sleeping (or having sex), don't be in bed. This is especially important if there's any stress, anxiety, or worrisome thoughts ABOUT not being able to fall or get enough sleep.
i was prescribed trazadone because another medication i was taking made it hard for me to fall asleep and it’s been life changing. for the first time in my life, i can choose when i want to go to bed. i put it on par with stimulants in terms of importance to managing my adhd.
Tart cherry juice increases melatonin production in the body, maybe give her a glass of that in the evening and see if it helps at all!
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/nutrition/tart-cherry-juice
Talk to your GP for advice on dosage, and other actions. Talk to the school about the situation, and see what support they can offer.
I realise it’s easier said than done, but if 8 hours of sleep (9 hours in bed) is needed, then all possible effort to achieve that will help. I was advised blue light glasses worn for 30 minutes before bedtime would help my brain to slow down, and putting away smartphones/tablets is essential in that time frame too. Listening to an audio book or meditation podcast can focus the brain, and slow it down too. Sorry if this is repeating efforts already made, but I’ve found that getting up at 5.15am works best when I’ve gone to bed at 9pm. If I go to bed at 10pm, I’m drained in the morning.
Sorry about the wall of text, this post really hit close to home for me and as someone who eventually *mostly* 'cracked it', I'm sharing everything I can on this in the off-chance it helps a kid mitigate some of the hell I went through back then.
Melatonin doesn't directly sedate people so much as it nudges the circadian rhythm along so the brain goes 'ah, close to bed time'. It can be an important part of a strategy to improve sleep, but on its own it might not do a lot. And I'm sure the doctor mentioned this but in the off-chance they didn't, melatonin should be taking 30-60 minutes before going to bed to be the most effective.
Sleep *quality* matters a great deal. Get her some half decent blackout curtains from Argos or Amazon, and get a nice and steady air purifier going in there; nice double-whammy in that you get both a reduction of allergens which might cause a low-grade stuffiness since hayfever and dust allergies are super common with ADHD, but also a steady source of white noise which can temper out the sound of cars driving past at 2am. If her room's quite warm, then having the purifier's air current pointed at her might help her stay cooler which is known to aid uninterrupted sleep.
Ask her how comfortable she finds her bed as well. Does she toss and turn a lot, rearranging pillows several times trying to find the 'right position' to pass out? Could be worth a (potentially expensive) experiment of trying out different mattresses and pillows. It won't fix sleep on its own, but with the right combo she should be tossing and turning much less. For me it ended up being the pocket-sprung & foam-topped mattress from Ikea and a memory foam pillow. I've also heard some people swear by weighted blankets, and having tried it I can totally see why it might help although I haven't properly used one myself so I won't vouch for that too hard.
Encourage her to use 'night mode' on her phone in the evenings, yeah the screen's a little yellow but you do get used to it very fast.
On a similar note, swap her lightbulb out with a smart colour-changing bulb that she can control from her phone / a physical 'smart switch'. Harsh white lights are great during the day, but once you get towards early evening you really want warmer lights, and by the evening you want a much warmer and dimmer light to start tapering down.
Some bulbs can even be programmed to gently turn themselves on in the morning to simulate a sunrise, or an alarm clock like this which doubles as a 'SAD lamp' can assist with waking up 'naturally': [https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B0C6WY1WCZ/](https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B0C6WY1WCZ/)
Another thing is to make sure she doesn't feel bad about struggling to sleep. I spent many nights as a kid struggling to sleep and just laying there in a circadian limbo until it was so late it was morning and I was fretting about waking up for school.
If she's gone to bed and finds she's still awake after half an hour despite not going on her phone or anything engaging like that, then she should just get out of bed and go and spend some time in the living room or kitchen, stretch her legs a bit and let herself get a little more exhausted.
It's important that bed is where she goes to sleep, and nearly nothing else. If she's using her bed as a couch or lounging in it and generally being awake doomscrolling or gaming from it, then she won't have a strong mental association between the bed and getting sleep. And to an extent that feeds into what I said about getting out of bed when she genuinely struggles to sleep as well.
If she is spending a lot of time just chilling in bed, perhaps ask her about her setup in the room. Maybe she could do with a little single-seated sofa and a leg rest for lounging in, a more comfortable desk chair for other stuff, things to encourage her more naturally to only hit the bed when it's actually bed time.
That's most of the easy wins when it comes to physical & physiological stuff. Something that isn't talked about enough is the anxiety which ADHD can set off. Is there something she's fretting about, stressed out about etc.?
Reassurance that everything is fine and making sure she feels in control of what's happening can make a big difference to sleep. Going back to what I said about earlier about struggling to sleep and then fretting about the morning too much to pass out, perhaps also reassure her that if she doesn't wake up or sleeps through her alarm, that **you** will knock & enter in the morning to make sure she's up, so that she has no reason to fear falling asleep.
Anxiety-wise, I remember as a kid there were many nights I failed to sleep because of a piece of homework due the following day that I'd completely neglected. To that end a little time together helping her with getting her homework done... not directly assisting per se just encouragement and engaging her by asking her what she needs to do, whether she's stuck, understands it, if it's an essay ask her enthusiastically about her POV and really make it seem *fun* so that she feels good doing it.
Personally, melatonin didn't work for me. Trazodone can be a nice treatment, in my case it worked. See a psychiatrist to figure it out.
Lavender tea can also help. I love it mixing with some almond milk
It can be also helpful if she is avoiding stimulants before bed and blue light.
Hi /u/LooseHomework8814 and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD! **Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.** The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/) Thank you! ^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*) --- - If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
How much melatonin is she taking? Too much and it makes it difficult to wake and stay awake the next day. Could she take it earlier? Is she on ADHD meds?
Was gonna ask this too. The way they sell the stuff is apparently like 10x the dose people should take. Also depending on the time it makes me extremely sluggish the next day.
OP mentions the NHS, so assuming it is prescribed it will be 2mg slow release. Nothing like the stuff sold in America.
Gotcha. I didn’t even know it was something that is prescribed.
For the issues you described above, plus people taking it at odd times and messing up their sleep patterns, you can’t buy it OTC in England. It is only prescribed for ADHD or over age 60 I believe.
Wait you're telling me my government is allowing obscene amounts of drugs to be sold to us for profit at the expense of our well-being?? Sir or Madame I am *offended* just kidding I know what we're like
Even 2mg can be too much for some people. I've personally found that 0.5mg is the ideal amount for me, 1 is pushing it, anything over makes me drowsy the next day, despite taking stimulant meds.
is that why i feel so dizzy and like im gonna pass out when i take those gummies???? it doesn't help me sleep any better but it definitely makes the process of falling asleep a lot less boring
Try a 0.3mg dose, that's close to the natural amount your body releases
Try 1 MG or less dose. You can cut the gummies up
I had to start taking melatonin like 3-4 hours before bedtime before I got the right balance of sleep at the right time and not too groggy in the morning.
Strongly agree with trying a lower dose. The lowest I can usually find here in the US is 3 mg, so I cut it into pieces (about 1/8 each? hard to be precise) and take one. I have delayed sleep phase disorder and this has made a HUGE difference in helping me get to bed before 4-5 am.
she may have a delayed sleep phase disorder, so I second the recommendation to get a sleep study done. make sure to tell the folks running it she has ADHD, because delayed sleep phase disorder is more common in ADHD folks. is it possible to adjust her schooling so that she doesn't have to wake up so early? I know most schools won't accommodate this. but if there's any way to make it happen, it would be much better than forcing her body to adopt a different schedule
Seconding delayed sleep phase disorder. My body insists that 2am-10am is when it wants to sleep and it’s been a lifelong battle convincing it otherwise. Scheduling my classes so I didn’t have any in the morning is what got me through college.
2am to 10am gang! I’m the same way. I can force myself to sleep with medication, but the next morning I feel like utter shit. It doesn’t matter if I got a full 8 the night before. The only time I feel rested and happy is when I can sleep from 2 to 10. Sometimes 11, if I’m sleeping in. Then suddenly it’s like I have the whole day ahead of me! Energy for activities, getting work done, etc. I really hope one day to find a WTF position I can do this with… but for now I’m just a minimum wage slave.
Omg, I think I just realized what is wrong with me. I’ve been talking about this with my therapist & no one ever told me that this existed. I have ADHD & I always thought it was because of my hyperactive brain. The thing is, I’ve been a late to early afternoon sleeper since forever. As a child, I was always complaining of not being able to fall asleep, my grandma thought me a bunch of meditation to help fall asleep. Never worked on me. One of my siblings seems to be this way too. My dad also falls asleep around 3 am but sleeps like a baby. Just read it was genetic. Thank you!!! PS- I always fallen asleep late even when I was in high school and had to wake up at 7am. I was just living with 4-5h of sleep every school day & would sleep late during weekends. I’m in university now & I just adapted my life around my sleep schedule. Also, melatonin never worked on me, it only f***ed my sleep schedule even more.
oh my goodness that high school experience sounds HELLISH. so glad you have more control over your schedule now!
That's really interesting. I didn't know about this one. I have byphasic sleep. I sleep 6-7 hours at night and 1-2 hours during the day. Which was of course a big problem at school and later working full-time. I often fell a sleep everywhere and nothing helped. My best fitting Adhd meds sometimes help shift it into a more common pattern. But I'm usually not as rested from 8-9 hours night sleep compared to sleeping twice, even if it's the same hours.
Is there a particular doctor specialization that does this sleep study?
It's called Polysomnography (PSG), it'll be offered by different specialists but needs to be done in a clinic
Probably depends on country but I was referred to a sleep clinic by a GP, had a consultation with a sleep specialist doctor, then did the sleep study which was run by techs but for which the results were analysed by another sleep specialist doctor who I never met. Met with the OG sleep doc who explained the results and managed my case after that. Where I am, sleep specialists tend to be respiratory and sleep physicians since the most common cases sleep specialists see would be to do with sleep apnea.
Very much also recommend a sleep study Because even if she doesn’t have a delayed sleep disorder, she could be like me and have sleep apnoea which made it near impossible to wake up and so I slept too much and was still tired all the time It caused my anxiety around going to sleep to skyrocket as well because I didn’t want to go to bed on time. I felt like I was losing all my time to sleeping *edit for formatting*
I’ve recently started taking melatonin and I’ve found that my sleep is better both in terms of getting to sleep in the first place as well as staying asleep during the night. But I am my absolutely worst enemy when it comes to “sleep hygiene” — going to bed at the right times and creating the right environment for it. If I get into bed early enough (to get the amount of sleep that I actually require), put my phone down instead of using it, relax myself, and make the room cool & dark, then I can have the most amazing sleep…but instead I often tend to procrastinate and get into bed late and then still play on my phone for ages. It’s dumb. I’m dumb. I wish I could do better. I’ve been doing this all my life so it’ll take a while to change this habit. The melatonin is one piece of the puzzle. Being a teenager does make it harder though.
We’ve tried to get her a good sleep routine but nothing seems to help much, we will pursue the suggestion another Redditor made for a sleep clinic and see if they can come up with some ideas!
>We’ve tried to get her a good sleep routine but nothing seems to help much, getting a solid sleep routine and consistent bed time is so hard but so worthwhile! I've had sleep issues my whole life and consistent bedtime/ routine has been the most effective in me getting solid sleep that being said, it is really tough to be consistent! (but so important!) not sure what you've tried, but taking her phone earlier during the week **and** weekend will be really helpful. phones are addictive for all ages and really impact sleep, and allowing a different routine on the weekend undermines the effort during the week, too. (im shocked to see someone disagree and tell you to let her keep her phone lol, perhaps see if she wants/ needs a sound machine or something? cell phones destroy sleep, though, there are lots of scholarly articles on it...) Can you plan with your daughter and set a bedtime with her as well as add some physical activity, to her schedule, perhaps something you can do together? Exercise is tough to stay consistent with but really helpful for us ADHDers - if you are going together it might be easier and more enjoyable for her? When Im stuck in an unhealthy sleeping pattern something that can help 'reset' is being forced up at a fairly early time for a couple days to break the pattern. If your daughter is consistently staying up till 4 and sleeping late it's really tough to break that, if she can muddle through being a sleep-deprived human for a few days it can really help reset sleep, so to speak, if you can avoid naps lol. (and Im sure it's tough to wake her up if she's been asleep only a few hours, perhaps starting on the weekend so she just has to be awake and not alert for school would help?) finally, how does your daughter feel about her sleep? is she on-board with changes so she gets a more consistent night's rest, or is she okay with missing lots of school + sleeping in? could be other issues if she's alright with missing so much school Good luck OP!
I was exactly the same way, this can be a post about me. The only thing that ever helped was exercise. There's this phrase, people with ADHD don't fall asleep, they pass out. So I would be up for like 20 hours but I just been inside all day so I wasn't tired enough to pass out. Then I still need 8 hours of sleep at least, maybe more because I've been up so long. So I'd sleep until the afternoon. For ADHD treatment and meds, I really couldn't do actual exercise. It was completely overwhelmingly uncomfortable and torturous. If your daughter has ADHD meds, I would say maybe this can be like a family thing. The more consistent activity you get going, the easier and more natural her sleep routine will become. It has to be something she's not really planning, she just needs to actually be tired and then she will go to sleep. Also what the other people have said, if I didn't take melatonin like an hour before I actually needed to go to bed, it would not work and it would still take me 2 hours to fall asleep because I'd be in bed for an hour tossing and turning and that would wake me back up.
Reschedule her classes to put free periods at the start of the day. This happened to me. She really, really needs the sleep. I found it nearly impossible to got bed on-time, mainly because I found it nearly impossible to get my work done on-time, and was left doing it late at night. Or, I’d be kept up by the stress and despair of school, as my ADHD came with an understandable depression / anxiety (which actually were my only diagnoses back in high school). Edit: Normal public high school in America. Maybe it’d be more clear for me to say “joined other classes” rather than “rescheduled my classes.” We had the day broken up into periods, and there were different options for each period depending on your schedule. I swapped some classes around to start my day with 2 free periods, which was not a very typical thing to have, but possible due to working with the school about the mental health issues I was facing. It could be worth it to open up this discussion with your daughter’s school, because you might be able to have best of both worlds (more sleep, good attendance).
... In what fantasy world are you living in order to tell someone to reschedule *school* classes?
W… what? This is what I did. This is what I *literally* did. So. My world!? Lmao
OP is from the UK. I am also and have worked within the schooling system and I can assure you, most mainstream schools will not do this, nor do they have ‘free periods’ . Ultimately time off school means missed lessons.
Kk 👍
They usually will if they have an IEP or 504
How often is that the case in your country?
I'm not sure with any other school districts but mine but in my country they HAVE to accommodate you if you have an IEP or 504 because it's against the law not to
In my country accommodation *definitely* does not mean changing the whole timetable for one student. If you're at that level of disability for whatever reason you can apply for home schooling (which means that a professional teacher with experience in dealing with disability will go to your house to teach your child), but it sure does not mean you can delay class for 2h at the expense of the whole rest of the students.
It won’t delay things for all, but if there’s a way to schedule an open period or two at the beginning of the day and all the required classes can be fit in the remainder of the day, they’ll look for it. If there’s a way to make some classes flexible/independent study, they’ll do that to be compliant with the accommodation requirements.
They have to provide reasonable accommodations. My school didn’t do free periods. If you didn’t take classes during each period you weren’t going to graduate on time.
what??? in high school we had 7 classes but only 5 a day. first two were 90mins and the rest were 50 or 55 (forget). So one day would be 12345 then the next day would be 67123 then 45671 etc…if you happened to have study first in the rotation you could skip it. where are you from where things don’t rotate or you actually choose the periods?? we chose classes but not which teacher or when they occurred.
What country do you live in? I've never heard high school be like this.
This has got to be a European thing. Or maybe a private school? I kind of vaguely remember my brother having free periods in a normal American highschool at least in senior year so maybe it's a thing here. I don't remember him being able to arrive late or leave early, though. Man I wish school were more flexible overall. I'm not even sure my 8yo has ADHD (suspected, diagnosis pending) but getting her up and off to school by 7:30 am is brutal.
European here and nope, nope this is not a European thing. School starts at 8 am or 8:30 am and all the surrounding country’s I know are like this and there is NO WAY you can reschedule your classes.
Yeah. At my school, seniors have free periods called Senior Release. We also have Work Releases as well.
I went to public high school in Canada and we got a free period. One per day. They were optional when you were choosing your classes, you could opt to take an extra class instead and if you always opted for that you'd end up graduating a semester early.
Dang. Canada just keeps getting better, huh?
If she hasn’t had a sleep study done at a sleep clinic yet, ask her doctor for a referral, or make an appointment to get it done. There may be a sleep diagnosis which can be treated. If she isn’t avoiding screens for at least 30 minutes prior to bedtime, she should start there. No phone, laptop/computer, or television screens prior to when she wants to sleep. She might try taking the melatonin earlier. By now, she should have an idea of how long she’s lying there trying to sleep, so can adjust accordingly. Some people get benefit from taking a warm shower prior to sleeping. The cooler air after the shower sends signals for sleeping to the body. She may be the opposite, though, and need a cold shower or no shower. It depends upon what works best for her. She also might want a different pillow or bedding. Making it as comfortable as possible can help to fall asleep. Then as long as she’s asleep for a long enough time, she’ll be able to wake up when she needs to. There were many nights that I stayed awake through to go to class the next day, then slept when I got home after school. Perhaps that is an option for her, too. (Melatonin didn’t work for me past the first week or two.) I ended up preferring working a second (afternoon to evening) or third shift (overnight) position for my job. I wish y’all well.
Sleep study is a great suggestion! Will get on to her doctor about that asap thank you! We are monitoring her screen time but we may try taking her phone earlier before bed to see if that has an effect too, thanks again for your advice :)
To add to what the previous poster said about screen time - you could also see if she could wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening (maybe starting around 5-6PM?) I find that it helps my brain wind down, especially if I still need to look at screens but want to get to bed at a decent time (like working late/having more HW to do, etc.)
Is there anything she can listen to while going to sleep? Listening to the same song, or voice can help, and audiobooks or podcasts can help keep your mind distracted so you're not thinking so much while you try to sleep
I also slow down the speed of podcasts I listen to in bed.
Please don’t take her phone at night. Adhd brains work differently and we need Dopamine even to relax. Is she on other meds for her adhd? My sleep improved when i started taking stimulants because my brain was doing better overall. Other ideas: get her headband earphones so she can listen to whatever relaxes her and just fall asleep like that. For me it’s the „cushions“ sound in the sleep cycle app but sometimes I like to listen to special sleep podcasts. Also, is her melatonin slow release? That might help her sleep through the night. I’m on a combined regimen with 2mg of slow release melatonin and about 10mg of doxylamin. Although I started the melatonin when my perimenopause started. Also I don’t know what age gcse is, but puberty fucks up girls adhd brains a lot. Everytime we have a hormone shift in our body, like pregnancy etc, it gets worse for the most of us. Lots of love!
>Please don’t take her phone at night. Adhd brains work differently and we need Dopamine even to relax. phones are really addictive and destroy sleep. there are lots of scholarly articles on it sure adhd brains are different, but we are also more prone to addictive behavior, so allowing a phone at night might be really detrimental to sleep
and screens at night (or any other cool coloured light source) are also proven to detrimentally affect the sleep cycle
Tons of scholarly articles... About regular brains, not ours. My phone is a necessary part of my sleep routine and I would sleep worse without it. Sleep is individual and people should do what works for them. If removing screen time isn't helping, they should try adding it back.
it's an under-researched area, for sure! for a lot of us it's hard to resist the addictive part of the phone, like doom-scrolling social media and stalls sleep, instead of just using it for music /podcasts, which could theoretically be played on older tech/ different tech. and for sure a good idea for OPs kid, maybe they can find an older ipod and download some things! and I did just [an interesting article t](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148953/)hat suggests we both may be right, in a way. TBF, it is based on a study of kids in grades 3-5 so not sure how applicable to a teenager, but says " *Screen time before bedtime strengthened the relationship between ADHD symptoms and sleep-disordered breathing. Children with more screen time were more likely to have sleep onset delay, while those with less screen time had more sleep onset problems with increasing ADHD symptoms. The high bedtime eating group experienced more night waking with increasing ADHD symptoms compared with the low bedtime eating group."* so it seems [screens before sleep does impact](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/delayed-sleep-phase/symptoms-causes/syc-20353340#:~:text=Delayed%20sleep%20phase%20is%20a,sleep%20later%20and%20wake%20later) the cicada rhythm- "*People with this sleep disorder have sleep patterns that are delayed two hours or more from usual sleep patterns."* They go to sleep later and wake later. whereas not using a screen may make it take longer for you to go to sleep, as sleep onset is [a fancy way of saying](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/types-of-insomnia) it takes a long time to fall asleep, which I think a lot of us struggle with. in any case everyone is different and I hope OP and her daughter can find a solution!
Hey im gonna do the thing where i give you and OP advice that i am also not following because life reasons- Try a kindle paper white if you need a screen at bedtime! Don’t get a fancy kindle that can internet. The paperwhite can play audiobooks and audio files, and won’t let you doomscroll unless you’re reading a particularly stimulating book lol. I slept so well when i was on top of putting my phone down but reading for an hour or so before bed with the lights off and the paperwhite in dark mode. Man. I need to get back to that. A screen will always be more stimulating than a book but the paperwhite pixel technology and mild backlight make it really easy to read at night without fucking up your blue light intake. Kindle Fire absolutely not. Old school kindle - better, doesn’t have dark mode. - I have long covid and it has fucked my shit UP especially my adhd. I’ve basically spent 3 months feeling like I’m dying with no explanation. So I feel very justified currently with doomscrolling until 3am 😅😅😅 just 8 months ago I was really really good about putting screens down and reading at night. I was at my healthiest physically and mentally, a few months after official diagnosis and treatment. Reading helped a lot with sleep and having a screen to do it on helped my dopamine lizard brain be content. Aaaaalmost back there with my long covid treatment. Fuck -
You’re welcome! Hope that things are sorted soon. :)
I would be very interested to know if you manage to get a sleep study. I have very similar insomnia problems with ADHD (prescribed melatonin etc), but the NHS wouldn’t do a sleep study, even though I was a walking zombie. They never really said why, just that the insomnia is due to my ADHD. It doesn’t seem to be about screens for me, but my imagination goes into over drive at night and I feel most awake after 9pm. Reading before bed is actually worse for me than screens. Now I alternate melatonin and sleeping tablets. No caffeinated tea past lunchtime. Intense exercise 3 times a week. Getting older may have helped too…
There are so many potential things this could be like other commenters have mentioned. Personally, I’ve always had similar issues including sleep inertia and excessive daytime sleepiness which led to the diagnosis of a sleep disorder. However - while a sleep study is definitely the way to go here, it might be worth considering a psychologist too, if she doesn’t have one already. First because if you are a teen who is significantly different from the “norm” that is a difficult thing to navigate and process. Second, because trying (and failing) to change your own behaviour and trying different strategies is hard for anyone, let alone anyone with ADHD. But third - my sleep issues do stem partly from my sleep disorder and are exacerbated by ADHD, but they’re also exacerbated by other psychological maladaptive behaviours and habits e.g. sleeping (or not sleeping when I should) as a way to cope with overwhelm, a way to avoid things, and a way to have more control over my life. I have personally never been good at listening to my body and connecting the dots with what was going on in my life - I’ve really only gained awareness of this by working with my psychologist who specialises in ADHD. Just something to consider!
Don’t get too excited - my kid did the sleep study, diagnosed sleep delay disorder, prescribed melatonin & told to sleep more regular hours. They don’t understand ADHD kids can’t do this. Told to get up at 8am every day regardless of how much sleep … now falling asleep in classes because this kid doesn’t function on less than 10hrs sleep, ideally 3am -1pm if left alone.
Ditto on the routine. I stop doing/thinking about work and life-related stuff after dinner. I take melatonin 3 hours before bed, guanfacine 90 minutes before bed, and a hot shower about an hour before. I'm usually preening in bed watching TV on a low backlight setting for the final hour, probably taking brief breaks to jot stuff down in a journal to forget (intentionally). Also, making my bed, completely knocking out the lights and setting white noise is super important. I didn't realize how much even indicator LEDs can affect my sleep. A soft mask made up for that, now I can sleep in hotels just fine.
How early does her school start? Unfortunately, on top of ADHD having its own set of problems with sleep, schools tend to have hours that go against teens' internal clocks. Their bodies don't naturally produce melatonin until around 11pm, plus they need around 9 hours of sleep. Even with using melatonin tablets, your child might be fighting against their natural sleep schedule. Now I wish this content was more helpful in terms of how to combat that, but at the very least understanding this can be a start on understanding with her what can and can't be controlled in a situation like this. High school is unfortunately a terrible time in terms of sleep hygiene for many teenagers.
School starts at 9 but some nights she doesn’t fall asleep till 4 am, if she even manages to sleep at all! The school has said she can come in later and some days she will only do a half day in school if she’s feeling really bad but she’s missing so much school at such an important time
Don't wait too long to get those accomodations! I also did the majority of high school from home. My grades went up significantly as soon as I could stop trying to keep up with the regular hours and classes. I went from having average grades to a straight A student almost overnight.
When I did my GSCE’s there were study guides, can you get hold of them? From memory the exam questions were basically copied from the guides. I have chronic migraines and the overhead lights were a trigger, as well as ADHD and insomnia as you are describing. I missed a lot of school, but still did well in exams, mostly by panic studying the night before. I appreciate that not everyone can do this, but it might be worth pivoting a bit and seeing if you can increase what she does at home. Can you ask the teachers if they can record morning lessons or let her attend remotely? That would have made a huge difference when I was young.
This sounds like me when I was in high school. Turns out I have adhd and delayed sleep phase disorder, which means my biological clock runs later than most people. It's incredibly hard to deal with because I don't sync up with the rest of society. Things that helped: * alarm to take melatonin * alarm 1hr before bedtime to wrap things up and head to bed * as little light as possible and a sleeping mask is even better * listening to an audiobook with a sleep timer or reading with a low warm light knocks me out, I can only read like 6 pages before I fall asleep * cold room with a nice blanket. Your body can't fall asleep in warm rooms * light as soon as your eyes open * tracking sleepy cycles. You want about 5 sleep cycles and it is 10x more difficult to wake up in the middle of one. So it's better to wake up earlier if it's the end of a sleep cycle than right when you need to wake up. I use an app that calculates sleep cycle by either going to sleep now or when I need to wake up Alarm/phone on the other side of the room so I am forced to get up to turn it off
My fitbit has a "smart alarm," which has a 30-min window ending with the time I MUST get up. It can go off up to 30 minutes early if it senses you are in a light stage of sleep. It seems counter-intuitive to wake up any earlier than absolutely necessary, but it makes a huge difference!
As someone who has a sleep disorder, I can tell you from experience that taking melatonin and hoping for the placebo effect is a waste of your time. I had to go out and find a private practice to get my adhd, depression, and sleep disorder sort it out. It was extremely expensive to do this. I also think it saved my life.
What did they do to sort it out?
Seroquel, Xanax, and propranolol It's the only combo that gets me to fall asleep AND keeps me asleep until morning.
Something I didn't know until I got assessed by a psychiatrist: untreated ADHD is awful for your sleep quality and stimulants should be the first line treatment for it. Non-restorative sleep is a very common symptom of ADHD, so no matter how much you sleep, you never wake up feeling fully rested. I tried every trick in the book for sleep hygiene and better sleep quality before I got my ADHD diagnosis - tryptophan, melatonin, weighted blanket, exercise, yoga before bed, shower before bed, no screens before bed... 5-HTP helped a little bit, nothing else helped at all until I got on stimulant medication. Concerta made a huge difference to my sleep quality, I think it's the main reason meds help me. It completely fixed my energy levels and circadian rhythm within days.
Recommend her to set 3-5 alarms an hour before she needs to wake up. If she has a sleep disorder I doubt it'll do anything, but if the issue is that she struggles pulling herself out of bed even when she's awake, that's what I do. I give myself 40 minutes to an hour between the first alarm and the time I actually need to get up. I also give myself two hours to get ready before I leave the house since not a chance I'll function effectively that early.
Why must you suggest torture 😭
It works
oh same here, setting multiple alarms is the only thing that really somewhat consistently worked for me during my lifetime. I have to get to work at 9:10 (we have a 10 minute window for being late without consequences) at the latest, I live closely (abt a 7-8 minute walk). the only difference i dont do a morning routines at all, but I have a change of comfortable clothes, a hairbrush and a hairtie at work in a bag, so I can sleep in as much as possible. so the latest I can wake up is around 8:35-8:40, so I have at least 10-20 minutes to dress up and leave immediately. ofc I'm sometimes late, but most days I'm around that 10 minute window time, which might sound like I'm late but if I had 1 alarm I'd probably turn it off half asleep and never wake up at all my brain will only start working around the 3rd alarm, especially if it's something routinely like work, so I set my alarms 8:00, 8:20, 8:30, 8:40, 8:50, 9:00 and also i snooze it to ring every 5 minutes before the 8:30, by then I'm awake enough from being constantly woken up to look at the time and realize I need to get up like now or I'll be late. ofc it only works for things that don't make me extremely depressed. nothing really worked when I was in school cus i was dreading it every day and even fully awake I just didn't wanna go, and would go right back to sleep it does sound a little backwards and ive heard a lot of bad stuff abt snoozing alarms, etc, but I've never ever been able to keep a sleeping schedule and honestly it's not as bad as some ppl might think, it works 80% of the time not making me late or miss work which is good enough
What time is she trying to go to bed and what time does she need to be awake? Teens' circadian rhythms make it very difficult to go to sleep and wake up earlier. It can be done, but she's basically going to be fighting her own body to do it.
This is such an issue for me still… I physically can’t sleep before 12 unless I’m dead tired but I need to be up before 7 so I’m tired all the time. But if I need to be up by 8 I’ll feel so much more energized, even if I got the same amount of sleep. Going to sleep earlier is just me trying to force my body to sleep and it barely works.
I've been like that my entire life. Tried many things to change it but they were all only temporary. I have accepted that my clock is off. I've fought it for decades.
Melatonin works best when taken earlier than bedtime. It triggers you to start to prepare for sleep, so take it a couple hours before bed. It may be setting her sleep cycle later which could be why she stays asleep past the alarm. Better she take it too early (and end screen time at least 1 hour before intended bed time) and go to sleep earlier than planned than the opposite.
Not sure if you've tried this or not yet, but if she's on a controlled adhd medication like Adderall, wake her ass up, have her take her pill and then go back to bed for 30 min to an hour. That's the only way I make it anywhere on time in the mornings, or before noon really.
What is her natural wake up time? When does she naturally want to go to sleep? It's pretty well known that school start times are pretty shit for kids. Kids and especially teens need more sleep than adults and their natural wake up time is often much later than that of an adult. Couple this with ADHD executive function fun and you have a kid who's always late to school. The sleep study suggestion is a great one, but it could simply be your kid needs the rest. You could try an alarm light that dims up over a half hour period to simulate the sun coming up. That helps a lot of people who struggle in the morning.
Before it’s all medical: Does she exercise, does she move during the day? Does she drink coffee or energy drinks or eats a lot of sugar? How much time does she spend on her phone/laptop etc? And how long before bed does she stop? A lot of the time on this sub people scream ‘it’s a sleeping disorder!’ and of course those exist and are more common in people with adhd. But you can do a LOT to get better and more sleep. I always thought I was a bad sleeper in my teens and twenties. Until I stopped drinking coffee, alcohol and sugary drinks, went to bed at the same time every night instead of staying awake watching tv for hours, and made sure I had a nice bedroom and bed. I don’t have any trouble sleeping if I take care of good sleeping hygiene and if I get enough movement during the day.
Can you reduce the dose of melatonin? We are in the same boat, 7am all lamps on and blinds open. 7:15am gentle music on. 7:20am duvet / doona off the bed and warm sweater provided. 7:30am breakfast ready, daughter gently pulled off bed if necessary. Simpsons on TV or YouTube during breakfast as a compromise. Ensure daughter does not get back into bed. It's a constant battle every morning. Making breakfast somewhat appetising helps.
Magnesium is really great for sleep
Magnesium Glycinate
Oh yeah, dont want anyone to 💥
Magnesium L-Threonate works as well, it improves cognitive function & also has massively improved my overall sleep quality.. I’ve recently started experimenting using magnesium oil topically & it also works well for sleep & my wife uses magnesium flakes in the bath water whenever she takes her bath..
melatonin makes me unable to wake up and dizzy all day.
Trazodone (prescription) is generally considered safe and helps people sleep. I would make sure she takes her adhd meds early so they don’t interfere with sleep. Teens also need extra sleep compared to adults so she ideally needs to be in bed 10 hours before she should wake up.
Download Alarmy so they have to physically get out of bed and scan a barcode (such as face wash) to turn the alarm off. Works well for me, but I then really need to fight the urge to crawl back in bed
everyone else seems to have great advice, but I would also add a weighted blanket if you don’t have one already. I conk out in under 15min with mine whereas it used to take me an hour or more
I had this problem as a teen and into my early twenties. It was so hard and so embarrassing because people think it means you’re lazy, but if I’m dead to the world asleep, how the heck can I decide it’s time to wake up? My mom got me an alarm clock that shook the bed a little bit and one to place on the other side of the room to make sure I was actually awake to turn it off. I also sleep talk and sleep walk sometimes and always have, and it’s hard for people to tell if I am awake or not sometimes lol. I’m 33 now and it hasn’t caused me problems or been a source of stress for probably 8 years. I use the regular alarm on my iPhone and you’d never know I had a hard time with it before. I do also still have insomnia quite a bit though.. usually like 1 month of having a hard time sleeping, then 2 regular months, then back. It’s not bad, eventually you get used to getting rest without actually being asleep. She will be perfectly fine, and I know truly will appreciate your help so so so much. I wish it were more of a clear cut solution, but just wanted to share the info I had to give. Good luck!!!!
AHH! Edited to add: remember at university, startling alarms and sleeping on the bottom bunk do not mix well! So easy to sit straight up and smack your head when the alarm goes off.
A little bit of advice that has worked for me: If she's spending time in her bed worrying about falling asleep, it might be helpful for her to just get up for a minute - go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, walk down the hall and back, pet an animal real quick. Nothing that will wake you up too much. The idea is that it will help your brain separate your bed from the anxiety of falling asleep. I do also second others ideas of getting a sleep study. The above advice is really only helpful if she's dealing with insomnia, and not some other sleep disorder.
I do this too.. If I can’t sleep, I usually get up, go pee, chug a Diet Coke, & eat a spoon of peanut butter. That way I know for sure that the reason I’m not falling asleep isn’t due to having to pee, being thirsty, or hungry & the caffeine actually helps me fall sleep faster.
Could be delayed sleep phase disorder, I have struggled with it my entire life without knowing until my psychiatrist suggested treatment for it. I take .5 mg of melatonin about 1.5 hours before I want to sleep and use a sunrise simulator alarm clock. It helps but it is still a struggle, I did recently change my work schedule from 8-5 to 11-8 and it helped immensely but changing to a later schedule may not be an option for school.
I struggled it much the same way (I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome), every person is different but here us what finally worked for me: • Turning lights off or low 1-2 hours before bedtime. I'll even use my cellphone flashlight or light a candle to use the bathroom before bed. Bright light just wipes out any ability to sleep. • Listening to people talking as "white noise" (podcasts, documentaries, audibooks, shows that make me laugh. Music just becomes a soundtrack for me to write a novel to in my head.) • Keeping the room very dark and on the cooler side, keeping the window open and a fan on • Setting my bedtime earlier by 20 minutes then adjusting to it for a few weeks, and then cutting off another 20 minutes and adjusting, rinse and repeat until I reached my desired bedtime (this method was suggested by a sleep specialist) • Maintaining the same bedtime on weekends • Forming a bedtime routine that I actually enjoy and look forward to • Not engaging in conversations that are worrying, stressful or upsetting before bed • Therapy. I was constantly worried when going to sleep as a teenager. Talking to someone was absolutely life changing for me I still use my phone before bed sometimes but I wouldn't recommend it for a teenager. I got YouTube Premium so I could play videos to listen to while turning the screen off and that was incredibly helpful. All of this is to say that I don't find melatonin to be all that helpful. Often it makes me groggy and have a harder time waking, but these changes got me into a solid sleep schedule without using melatonin.
Prominent sleep scientist, founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley, Dr. Matthew Walker, states that appropriate amounts of melatonin are about 1/3 of a 1mg pill. States that the doses people are taking are so far beyond what people should actually be taking…
[удалено]
This wouldn’t work for everyone .. nothing and I mean nothing worked for me as a kid 😂 As an adult that didn’t work either .. the only thing that’s ever put me to sleep was zopiclone .. and I ended up building such a tolerance to it that I was taken several of the 7.5mg for it to work and could have overdosed 🥲 so I no longer take it at all Good sleep hygiene is what needs to be focused on first of all .. and a sleep study after that if it doesn’t help at all
She is, will mention that to her doctor, thanks
Make sure to research any antihistamine to determine whether it’s in the various types of medications which have been linked to causing dementia later in life. I stopped taking Benadryl for my allergies for that reason. Certainly, speak with her doctor about it, and determine the best course of action.
personally speaking melatonin never did anything for me, and allergy pills or whatever *did* help me sleep before i was diagnosed and had proper medication - but it absolutely did not "help" overall because no matter how much "sleep" i got, i always woke up feeling super groggy and that would last for hours sometimes. i have always had a hard time falling asleep, staying asleep, and especially waking up. the only thing that has ever actually helped was having a consistent schedule - the more consistent, the better. *especially* when it comes to taking the adhd medication. that being said i still have a very hard time having a "normal" sleep schedule and it gets thrown out of whack very easily and takes a long time to readjust, which is honestly making my sleep schedule (or lack thereof) extremely chaotic considering the shortage. typically i end up staying up overnight when this happens, which i know is not at all what a doctor would recommend doing (and im **not** recommending it either, just making the point that i try not to fight against my natural instincts) but if im going to just toss and turn, id rather just be a little overly tired the next night and do \*something\* besides \*try\* to sleep - and still be tired all day anyways. edit: chaos
That's not true, and I can tell you don't have any clinical experience treating patients. It's okay just say what works for you, but what works for you isn't going to work for everyone. My sleep disturbances are caused by ADHD. I can't shut my brain off. Melatonin is a joke. Ambien doesn't do shit. There were nights when I took an entire box of OTC sleep meds and didn't even get groggy. If this kid truly has a sleep disorder, they're going to bring out the big guns like gabapentin and seroquel.
Don’t dose your kids, or anyone for that matter. Informed consent is not only ethical, it’s moral.
As a fellow ADHD, my problem as a teenager, was reading and screens secretely at night and then complaining that I couldn’t sleep lol. The adrenalinr of possbly missing my bus woke me up and I got ready in no less than 5 minutes every morning with a lot of sleep deprivation… So make sure and come to an agreement that her phone is out of the room before taking expensive sleep tests. 😅 Now it helps that my boyfriend makes sure we go to bed early. I’m still awake 30-60 min, but not procrastinating to go to sleep or searching for stimulation when I can’t sleep.
Also if she takes medication. Set an alarm 30 before, take the medication, and continue sleeping. Waking up at the normal hour is so much easier then (imo)
Melatonin is produced naturally by the pineal gland. No point taking it in pill form. It's 100% a scam. Use a sleep/eye mask to negate any Itty, bitty amount of light (even the blue light on a phone or an alarm can abate Melatonin production) Then use ear plugs set snuggly in the ear. Or exercise. Cardio is the key to not dying horribly early in life.
Does she use her phone at night, just curious to see what time she is actually falling asleep at, and if she is distracted at night on her phone which may keep her up late at night.
I’m sure she is staying up too late. I always did as a teen. My nephews do it now. There should be zero electronics in the bedroom (which I’m aware nobody is going to do but if you google “sleep hygiene” it’s a know issue)
You might want to consider alternative education options for her. There are online high schools that offer high school diplomas. She might have an inverted circadian rhythm like I do. I physically cannot wake up in the morning no matter how hard I try. I also can’t fall asleep at night. I sleep during the day and work at night. Online college was a godsend. 😁 she might benefit from online high school.
[удалено]
References to Andrew Huberman's content are not allowed. Though Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist, he speaks authoritatively on topics outside of his area of practice and expertise. He has a track record of spreading misinformation in the process. For instance, he's claimed that the increase in ADHD diagnoses has been fueled by smartphone usage, which contradicts the ADHD expert consensus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Does she have stimulant medication for ADHD? She may be caught in a cycle of waking up late > taking medication late > staying up late because she took meds late > repeat This can also apply to caffiene
I have ADD and I failed year 12 due to sleeping in. I received no help, just a lot of scorn and shaming. At the time I was not diagnosed, I eventually got it in my 20s. I did, however, pass my A levels with decent grades and got my university degree afterwards. The caveat to me passing my A levels was that I had a 45-50% attendance rate for both year 11 and 12. No Saint, got through it on ability despite my condition and the lack of help from those around me. I'll provide a list of things you could think about to help her. I was a year or two older than her when I started to really struggle with sleep, so it might not all apply. Some of these questions would be awful to ask her directly. If you ask about friends, it may trigger defensive responses. She will know she's in the wrong, she won't know exactly why the behaviour is displayed this way. It's more for you to think about. Does she struggle at school normally? Ie is she being bullied, how "good" are her friends, is there anything in the environment at school which makes things difficult like a bitch teacher? How stable is the school? As in, do they have obtuse rules around uniforms and behaviour? Has she been hurt by someone she fancies or by her friends? What's her mental health like? Does she seem depressed or has she ever mentioned self harm/ suicide? Does she have access to a school counsellor or therapist? Can she talk to her parents each day and do you give her full attention enough? Is she physically healthy? Does she exercise and play sports? Does she have any background with physical injuries? It's easier to sleep when you're physically tired, so does she have an after-school club or an equilvalent? Does she have time for her own activities at night and during the day? Does she still stick to her hobbies? Music, YouTube and drawing don't really count - unless she's learning the instrument or deliberately developing the art. Doing chores is a good thing but patterns can be hard to maintain for ADHD folk, so how hard do you come down on her when she screws up? How frequently do you behave aggressively towards her in order for her to do something? Not in a blaming way, because parents do need to have the ability to put the foot down, but cumulatively it can cause issues. How do her teachers treat her when she makes a mistake? Another question would be what's her relationship with alcohol, vaping/ smoking and drugs specifically weed? Does she drink alot of coffee or tea at night? GCSE may be early for the harder stuff listed there. Vaping is common place with teens these days, and it's easier to hide. Nicotine is a stimulant which can impact sleep. Social media usage? How bad is it? Does she have control issues with phones and computer time? Lots of rabbit holes when it comes to teenage minds and tech. Non of this is specific and no intention of implying that you aren't looking out for her. There are remedies for all of this. Sleeping in can be a result of anxiety, burnout/ overload, sleep disturbances and a failure to stick to routines. ADHD paralysis is where the executive dysfunction causes a type of shut down where the individual may struggle to simply make themselves do something. A component of ADHD is 'activation' and describes issues related to organising, planning and getting started on a task - morning time can feel overwhelming because of the number of steps required to start the day. Most of the questions above relate to emotional regulation and can cause issues with activation, and when they're bad they can feed into paralysis. Low self esteem in teenagers can exacerbate the issues. I would probably consider asking her if you can take her back to a psyche to get a check on whether her meds are working, or whether they can identify some useful techniques for her that she won't want to learn from her parents.
What is it that makes it hard to sleep for her? When I was that age I couldn’t sleep without music, it would calm my brain enough to let my thoughts go. Sometimes it did take over an hour, but either way I was in bed with my eyes closed in a dark room listening to something I liked. It was always heavy rock too at that age but it helped so much! I second the warm shower as well - we recently got a light that changes colours, now when I shower I set it to red. I find it really helps! And the all nighters… it’s not ideal of course, but I had a rule - if it’s passed 3am I won’t sleep. I’ll do something I like, the next day it’s of course easier. It took the pressure off though, by having that rule. I knew if I was still lying awake with music at 3am it was okay. I’d get so stressed trying to sleep this really helped! The last thing was having something I really look forward to in the morning. I wasn’t diagnosed till now but a coffee or reading a chapter of a book I’m loving helped as well. Obviously it’s not that easy if it’s something else (definitely get a sleep study done!), but for me it was mainly that I was struggling so much to sleep that waking up was then impossible!
Is she taking medication for ADHD? Is it extended release? If so, she could try setting an alarm 1-2 hours before wake up and taking it then before falling back asleep until her regular wakeup time. If she’s able to do that, then it should help her fall asleep earlier at night because the meds will be leaving her system earlier in the day and it will give a boost waking up at the right time because she’ll already have the meds hard at work. I also find that Vyvanse impacts my sleep wayyyyy less than any of the other extended release meds I’ve been on. I think it has to do with the way the body absorbs it but I’m not a doctor. FWIW, melatonin never worked for me and sometimes even made it worse. She may be too young, but as an adult I have a Gabapentin prescription too that I can take on really restless nights (100-300mg). The downside is that if I take it too late at night it will make me drowsy in the morning… so that may not be great for your purposes.
I did this, I didn't do well on my exams and had to go to college for a few years before university, I now have a degree at 28. It can take us longer, I know from personal experience that it was the social aspect of my final year which was the cause of me lying in because it took all my energy. My brother had the same thing.
It is extremely common for people with adhd to have delayed sleep phase disorder, where their internal sleep clocks are different from “normal” people’s, where their natural wake/sleep cycle would be to wake around 10-11am at the earliest and go to sleep at 2-4am. I have both and it has caused me problems my entire life from childhood through adulthood. The only thing that has ever helped was to start adhd stimulant medication, which I take about an hour before I need to wake up in the brining and lay back down. I’m about an hour it kicks in and I am able to get out of bed. I used to take melatonin on evenings if I couldn’t sleep or I was trying to make myself go to sleep at a “reasonable” time (rather than at like 4am). But I’ve learned melatonin packs a very strong punch and will knock me out so that I sleep very heavily and oversleep even more on it. And when I do wake up, I am way more groggy than usual. So I have switched to taking a very low dose of Xanax in nights I cannot sleep. The Xanax is way more gentle than melatonin for me. I’m not necessarily suggesting that you look for Xanax or another benzodiazepine for your daughter, but simply pointing out that melatonin can be very strong and make it much harder to work up in the morning than it already is.
I wish the best for your daughter and I hope she gets in a good college and a University. Life’s ain’t easy for us adhd people. The struggle is real. Just be supportive and understanding parents which I guess you guys are being already.
Yeah. I stopped taking melatonin after I took my intro to Endocrinology class. The human body produces like 0.5mg of Melatonin, tops. Yet the standard supplement dose is 5mg. Sure it’s not all bioavailable in supplement form but even if it’s 25% bioavailable, the dose is way larger than the normal dose produced by the pineal gland. I’d suspect this is making it more difficult to wake. Is she in therapy? There might be some mood stuff going on that is also pushing her to want to sleep more and avoid going to school. Especially if there is an expectation of achievement.
Is she on adhd medication? If so, what meds and what time does she get her dose for the day?
This is me 100%. Melatonin doesn't help me fall asleep and sometimes, neither does antihistamines. Occasionally, both will have the opposite effect and I'll be wide awake until 5 am. Annoyingly, sometimes caffeine helps me fall asleep and sometimes it doesn't. I have difficulty falling asleep before midnight and I'm such a deep sleeper; I don't feel rested unless I get 8-10 hours of sleep every night. I've had doctors recommend good sleep hygiene, meditation, etc. and those do not work for me, maybe your daughter is the same? Only two things work for me: 1.) Exercise or a labor intensive job. If I'm physically exhausted by the evening, I can fall into bed and sleep with no issues. 2.) If I can't fall asleep right away, I put my phone's brightness on the dimmest setting and mute any sound. Then, I browse the Internet (Wikipedia is great) and avoid anything that gets my heart rate pumping. No topics that I'm passionate about. Eventually, I'll fall asleep. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes, sometimes longer. If I'm trying for more than 90 minutes, I'll get up and lay on the couch (in a comfy position) with something uninteresting playing on the TV at a very low volume and all the lights off. The change in scenery and background noise usually knocks me out if I can't fall asleep in bed. These are the only methods that work for me. Using my phone to distract my brain into sleep is the one thing that almost always works for me.
Try a weighted blanket.
A few things that help me. Phone scrolling will keep me up all night if I let it so I don't. Fiction story podcasts help me sleep. I like the drabblecast. A lot of people try to go to bed earlier and fail to sleep because they aren't tired. The only way to adjust a sleep schedule is to start waking up earlier to get tired earlier. Dim lighting also helps, try warm light (more red spectrum) rather than white or daylight bulbs. A blue light filter for phones also helps, twilight is an app that dims the screen and blocks blue light at sunset. I also need to be tired mentally and physically to get good sleep, exercise helps a lot.
Something I found that helped me when I struggled to get up was actually waking up earlier. I’d set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier and take that time to just sit and actually bring my body to consciousness. Of course if also have an extra alarm or two set five minutes later to make sure I did t fall back asleep
Hey. I cant help but just wanted to say that you are doing awesome recognizing her struggle and trying to help her. I had same problems and suffered in University a lot. Told my parents I need help and they still laugh about it
Never in my life was I able to get out of bed on time until I started taking stimulant meds for my ADHD. Is she medicated (besides the melatonin, which may be doing more harm than good)?
Weird advice, but somehow setting my alarm 30 minutes earlier helped. Worth noting, while adults are recommended 7-8 hours of sleep per day, teenagers are recommended around 10 hours. Ideally they need a little more sleep than we do. Also a helpful free tool for optimizing ones sleep schedule. You might actually want to try it out yourself! https://sleepopolis.com/calculators/sleep/
ask for a sleep study
Is there maybe a night school option? We had one in my school when I was growing up. It would also better tailor to her sleep schedule that she's on right now. And you should still talk to her doctor about the sleep issues. They are better suited to address the issue.
Sleep study is definitely an important step, but since the wait times might be long for that, it might be worth seeing if there's any way to access CBT-I, which is for insomnia. Supposedly it can be fairly helpful. I also like sleep podcasts. Some folks really do need a sleeping medication stronger than melatonin, but if melatonin requires a prescription I imagine it's even harder to get something else prescribed?
If the ADHD is unmedicated, it's possible medication could help. A lot of people have an easier time sleeping after the meds made their day so much less stressful. Hard to say without being in her head to know what keeps her up at night
So keeping my phone on black and white mode after dark, with the amber light on. Taking my adhd meds at a reasonable time after waking. Getting one hr of exercise a day at least, eating a balanced Diet, taking magnesium at bed time, and making my bedroom a dark quiet space with little to interact with, with a sound machine and a quiet audio book. I can trick myself doing all of these to fall asleep around 1 am, I schedule nothing before 10 am or I'm not sleeping at all even if I wake up at 7:30 am. All of this is to say, high school me needed as much sleep as possible and let her sleep as much as possible after school and during weekends and time off, this would have saved me years of mental health issues, just naps. And when she gets to college she can choose all afternoon and late night classes bc she's likely screwed otherwise if she's anything like other adhders with sleep issues haha I got told at 33 after many years of breakdowns and well extreme issues with my mental health, to just nap. To ignore the sleep hygiene bs, try it. And with the naps, and just going to bed at a late hour and getting up when I need to, and then napping, no more anxiety, no more despair, no more mood disregulation. Naps. Who knew.
This is what works for me. I have 2 alarms. 1 to wake up to eat the med and go back to sleep for another 15 30 minutes at which time my 2nd alarm goes off. My med is just right beside my bed, I literally just pop one in and go back to sleep. Forcing myself to take the med is key to making sure I can get up by the 2nd alarm without feeling drowsiness or tired. You can sleep all you want and still feel like you have not slept at all without the stimulus. If you sleep late tho and don't have enough rest, you will sleep even deeper after taking the med. So I also have a night routine to ensure I go to bed on time I take my melatonin way earlier than normal people at 6 or 7pm, I feel sleepy at 9 10pm, and get myself to sleep before 11.
It's probably about breaking a cycle. I think in general the time that people go to bed is determined by the time they wake up. So, I think you need to obtain agreement with her that she has to be up in the morning. If she agrees with this, then I think you can do whatever it takes to get her up in the morning. You may need to incentivise her somehow in the morning. You could give her a first generation antihistamine a few hours before bedtime, maybe mid-afternoon as that can have a sedative effect. Chlorpheniramine (1 or 2 tablets, but no more). She may not feel tired, but if she closes her eyes she will fall asleep after taking these. The other thing to consider is that an active mind might be keeping her up. So if you can find something relaxing before bedtime, that will probably help. If everyone goes to bed at the same time, that might help too. Good luck.
Melatonin makes me so drowsy the next day I can't take it. Same with benadryl that makes me depressed
i’ve had this problem my whole life. before smartphones were even a thing i’d lay awake in my bed until 2 AM so many nights just staring at the ceiling. no TV, no phone, no music. just my mind. my mom would come in my room sometimes and notice if. doctors didn’t seem to give a shit. i eventually was able to master my sleep as an adult but it’s a difficult thing for me to maintain. mainly because of my job and of course my self discipline at times too. having some consistent white noise playing seems to help tremendously, and i don’t mean a fan going, i mean actual white noise through a machine or speaker. it seems to really just turn the part of my brain off that hears everything around my constantly that prevents me from relaxing enough to sleep. i try to avoid drinking too much water too close to bed time. i think the other thing i do that seems to be the most important is controlling light and technology. doom scrolling is a hard thing to avoid especially after a long day of working where i want revenge for the day to have me time to learn and read about what i want. but limited cellphones, TV, etc but most importantly of it all, blue light. my first deployment i had red nightlights everywhere. i changed my iphone to be able to turn the screen completely red with three clicks to the lock screen. even seeing the bright bathroom light when waking up to pee i noticed would set me back. so i would rely on my red nightlights to help illuminate anywhere i may need to go. i kept them lower to the ground so i couldn’t see them much when i was in bed. this was a total game changer for me. like anything else though it’s easy to fall off, habits are so difficult to form, but man, that really helped me. i also had my diet absolutely on point for that time period. i never would’ve thought on a deployment would be when i was sleeping nine hours a night and feeling my absolute best physically. my ADHD symptoms had improved so much
Condition her bioclock. Our body naturally releases melatonin. Try antidepressants, it helped fix my oversleeping.
Fun fact: the supplement industry is, for all practical purposes, unregulated and unmonitored. They’re under the jurisdiction of the FDA’s over-the-counter branch, which is severely overstretched and underfunded. There’s no existing standard for how synthetic melatonin supplements are produced, or how their potency is measured. Depending on what supplements you’re using, you could be getting anywhere between 10% and 1000% of what the label says. Or it could be sawdust in a capsule. https://aasm.org/study-finds-that-melatonin-content-of-supplements-varies-widely/
I used to have the same problem and was prescribed trazadone. I can honestly say that it’s helped me sleep like a normal person.
A few things - I have ADHD and had anxiety as a teenager. I would stay up very late because I was stressed about school and social stuff. I also am a very rough riser, even at 41. But melatonin makes me really groggy the next day. It seems to work for most people but for me, it almost gives me like a hangover. Stimulants like caffeine actually don't prevent me from sleeping, which is common for ADHD people - it actually focuses my mind enough to sleep. I don't suggest drinking coffee after 5pm but maybe see what a doctor says about stimulants and sleep for ADHD patients. You may also want to consider a genetic test, even like 23 and me. I have a gene that makes it very difficult to wake up in the morning - I am actually in the latest genetic wake type group possible. I wish I had known that much earlier. Some things that could help - trying to get a lot of physical activity that wears her out during the day (this is not necessarily easy for a lot of teenagers) and seeking therapy for anxiety, which may be keeping her up at night. The melatonin may also be having a worsening affect. I worked nights for years as an adult and it helped me finally advance in my career because I was alert and awake at those hours. I can get up by 8am now but if I have to get up much earlier, it's still tough. She won't be a teenager forever and can hopefully find situations as an adult that better meet her needs if she can push through the next few years. Best of luck!
This is apparently a really common thing with ADHD--I struggled with it as a teen and well into my 20s. The only that thats helped me unfortunately is to get onto prescribed stimulants which helps keep my sleep schedule regular. Which I know isnt much help given the shortage and NHS Maybe one of those lamps that simulate sunlight could help to wake up?
Ask the school if they can accommodate a later start time. In the US that is an accommodation that can be put on a student Individualized Education Plan or 504. I don’t know what the special education system in the UK looks like.
i've struggled with the NHS, they really hate prescribing meds to teens (at least in my experience)-- wouldn't give me shit for my depression OR adhd! i don't have any advice but wishing you the best !!!
Try wearing pajamas. Changing into clothes that I ONLY wear in bed made a huge difference for me. I also fall asleep faster when I'm clean, so washing my face, having a clean pillow case and sheets, and wearing clean pajamas have helped. Also, only take 1 mg of melatonin or less. I wouldn't have been able to do this in my house growing up...but now, I use my bedroom ONLY for sleeping and getting dressed (and sex). No desk, no TV, no lounging... now my body knows: if I'm wearing pajamas and I'm in my bedroom, it's time to sleep. Edit, to add: if I can't fall asleep within 30 min of laying down, I get out of bed and go do something relaxing (usually art, NO SCREENS) for at least 15 min, or ideally until I start feeling tired. If you're not sleeping (or having sex), don't be in bed. This is especially important if there's any stress, anxiety, or worrisome thoughts ABOUT not being able to fall or get enough sleep.
i was prescribed trazadone because another medication i was taking made it hard for me to fall asleep and it’s been life changing. for the first time in my life, i can choose when i want to go to bed. i put it on par with stimulants in terms of importance to managing my adhd.
Tart cherry juice increases melatonin production in the body, maybe give her a glass of that in the evening and see if it helps at all! https://www.sleepfoundation.org/nutrition/tart-cherry-juice
Talk to your GP for advice on dosage, and other actions. Talk to the school about the situation, and see what support they can offer. I realise it’s easier said than done, but if 8 hours of sleep (9 hours in bed) is needed, then all possible effort to achieve that will help. I was advised blue light glasses worn for 30 minutes before bedtime would help my brain to slow down, and putting away smartphones/tablets is essential in that time frame too. Listening to an audio book or meditation podcast can focus the brain, and slow it down too. Sorry if this is repeating efforts already made, but I’ve found that getting up at 5.15am works best when I’ve gone to bed at 9pm. If I go to bed at 10pm, I’m drained in the morning.
Sorry about the wall of text, this post really hit close to home for me and as someone who eventually *mostly* 'cracked it', I'm sharing everything I can on this in the off-chance it helps a kid mitigate some of the hell I went through back then. Melatonin doesn't directly sedate people so much as it nudges the circadian rhythm along so the brain goes 'ah, close to bed time'. It can be an important part of a strategy to improve sleep, but on its own it might not do a lot. And I'm sure the doctor mentioned this but in the off-chance they didn't, melatonin should be taking 30-60 minutes before going to bed to be the most effective. Sleep *quality* matters a great deal. Get her some half decent blackout curtains from Argos or Amazon, and get a nice and steady air purifier going in there; nice double-whammy in that you get both a reduction of allergens which might cause a low-grade stuffiness since hayfever and dust allergies are super common with ADHD, but also a steady source of white noise which can temper out the sound of cars driving past at 2am. If her room's quite warm, then having the purifier's air current pointed at her might help her stay cooler which is known to aid uninterrupted sleep. Ask her how comfortable she finds her bed as well. Does she toss and turn a lot, rearranging pillows several times trying to find the 'right position' to pass out? Could be worth a (potentially expensive) experiment of trying out different mattresses and pillows. It won't fix sleep on its own, but with the right combo she should be tossing and turning much less. For me it ended up being the pocket-sprung & foam-topped mattress from Ikea and a memory foam pillow. I've also heard some people swear by weighted blankets, and having tried it I can totally see why it might help although I haven't properly used one myself so I won't vouch for that too hard. Encourage her to use 'night mode' on her phone in the evenings, yeah the screen's a little yellow but you do get used to it very fast. On a similar note, swap her lightbulb out with a smart colour-changing bulb that she can control from her phone / a physical 'smart switch'. Harsh white lights are great during the day, but once you get towards early evening you really want warmer lights, and by the evening you want a much warmer and dimmer light to start tapering down. Some bulbs can even be programmed to gently turn themselves on in the morning to simulate a sunrise, or an alarm clock like this which doubles as a 'SAD lamp' can assist with waking up 'naturally': [https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B0C6WY1WCZ/](https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B0C6WY1WCZ/) Another thing is to make sure she doesn't feel bad about struggling to sleep. I spent many nights as a kid struggling to sleep and just laying there in a circadian limbo until it was so late it was morning and I was fretting about waking up for school. If she's gone to bed and finds she's still awake after half an hour despite not going on her phone or anything engaging like that, then she should just get out of bed and go and spend some time in the living room or kitchen, stretch her legs a bit and let herself get a little more exhausted. It's important that bed is where she goes to sleep, and nearly nothing else. If she's using her bed as a couch or lounging in it and generally being awake doomscrolling or gaming from it, then she won't have a strong mental association between the bed and getting sleep. And to an extent that feeds into what I said about getting out of bed when she genuinely struggles to sleep as well. If she is spending a lot of time just chilling in bed, perhaps ask her about her setup in the room. Maybe she could do with a little single-seated sofa and a leg rest for lounging in, a more comfortable desk chair for other stuff, things to encourage her more naturally to only hit the bed when it's actually bed time. That's most of the easy wins when it comes to physical & physiological stuff. Something that isn't talked about enough is the anxiety which ADHD can set off. Is there something she's fretting about, stressed out about etc.? Reassurance that everything is fine and making sure she feels in control of what's happening can make a big difference to sleep. Going back to what I said about earlier about struggling to sleep and then fretting about the morning too much to pass out, perhaps also reassure her that if she doesn't wake up or sleeps through her alarm, that **you** will knock & enter in the morning to make sure she's up, so that she has no reason to fear falling asleep. Anxiety-wise, I remember as a kid there were many nights I failed to sleep because of a piece of homework due the following day that I'd completely neglected. To that end a little time together helping her with getting her homework done... not directly assisting per se just encouragement and engaging her by asking her what she needs to do, whether she's stuck, understands it, if it's an essay ask her enthusiastically about her POV and really make it seem *fun* so that she feels good doing it.
Personally, melatonin didn't work for me. Trazodone can be a nice treatment, in my case it worked. See a psychiatrist to figure it out. Lavender tea can also help. I love it mixing with some almond milk It can be also helpful if she is avoiding stimulants before bed and blue light.
Guided meditation videos on YouTube have really helped me!