Darden Bynum

It’s not just kids that stay up to watch TV. The flickering images can distract most people enough to keep them awake, at least for a short while and maybe longer before nodding off.

TVs are on so much (Televisions use to be CRTs, Cathode Ray Tubes, now any digital device screen can be this kind of distraction) people may have them on as background until the kids fall asleep.

In many homes, TVs are a constant drone-tone in the background. Sometimes it gets spiked with canned laughter or interrupted with raucous commercials, but in many children’s lives the TV  can be droning ON.

Turning Off the Box

Lots of people leave it on or turn it off just before dozing off. Others wake up to a TV. As a culture, even in subcultures here and abroad, TVs are going night and day. They’re on everywhere, all the time.

For many families, the TV is the extra household member. It’s the one who is frequently noisy, occasionally entertaining, but always on. Sometimes turned down, but rarely off.

TV-world sees itself as your child’s friend. It keeps its viewer’s flattery-battery charged all the time. It tells what to want. Tells what to eat, what to wear, what to BE. TV wants to be the music of children’s soul. It wants to tell children what they need to hear all the time. It even promises to provide companionship, family and yes, even love.

Think about this though: what’s the cost of the viewing? Is there really free TV?  Among many things, does TV merely keep at bay a dark truth about our culture, a particularly telling truth about us and our children: TV’s are a light in the darkness. Are we afraid of the dark? Maybe. But as a culture, we often think TV helps keep us company.

For many of us, we’ve been afraid of ourselves our whole life. It’s natural enough. Or if not TV, there’s lots of other electronic distractions: don’t just sit there and worry, do something. Turn on the Box, grab a joystick, download a distraction, play this digi-game.

Children and adolescents, especially when feeling sad and depressed, and especially when given the chance, will stay up half the night. Mostly they stay up watching TV; although, many will stay up all night online, emailing, playing music or testing their skill levels with digital and ‘net games.

Nowadays these distractions are the electronic baby sitter to the extreme.

TV starts playing its role in early childhood. Most parents succumb. What mothers/fathers have never turned on a TV while holding an infant?

What family has never plopped the kids in front of the TV to eat or wait or be entertained so the parent can “just do this one thing?” It cuts across geopolitical boundaries, race, ethnicity and class.

TV as Babysitter

The TV, and its electronic distractions (i-Pop media), promise to keep kids from feeling shunned (“Hey, when you’re on the bus, just ignore the bullies and listen to your i-Pod.”).

Even functional and healthy children have occasional fears of abandonment at reoccurring points in their lives. Multiple assurances and frequent soothing behavior on the part of parents and caregivers help alleviate this universal fear, but nobody can allay it all. Though TV promises it can.

TV promises to show you something, just after the commercial break, that will intrigue you or entertain you, and TV usually delivers. At least when TV says it will be right back after this commercial message, it IS. What parent always, with utter conviction and assurance, say that? There’s a comforting assurance of the timing of TV. Shows usually come on when they say they will, not like the other people who don’t always do what they say.

Dr. Nancy Maynard, a pediatrician at the Great Falls Clinic in Great Falls, Montana, suggests limiting TV. In a story from US News and World Report http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080225/tv-could-be-disrupting-your-kids-sleep.htm she says:

“I do tell parents it is good to limit the amount of TV during the day to less than two hours of screen time, including TV, computer, video games,” she said.

“And don’t use TV as a go-to-sleep aid,” Maynard advised. That holds true even for high schoolers, she added.

Maynard said she understood why the parents of younger children might be tempted to park their kids in front of the TV right before bedtime. “It gets them to stay in one place. But it’s not [helping them in] making changes the brain needs to make to the transition to sleep. And it may make it worse. The visual stimulation amps them up.”

“I think of it as going to the state fair,” Maynard tells parents when advising them not to let their children watch TV before bed. “You are on the midway, with all the lights and the noise. Walking away from that, I don’t know how many people are relaxed.”

Any adult or caregiver assurances of, “There, there, now, it’s all right…” goes a long way to help depressed teens and sad children get to sleep. Touch and soothing words help adolescent depression or childhood anxiety by helping kids be assured that fears of abandonment won’t be realized. It’s still not enough. Especially it’s not enough when compared to how much TV promises..

Most of us have abandonment experiences if not outright separation trauma issues. Many of us still do.*** You wanted to be a part of a group, a team, and ensemble, but were somehow excluded. Most people have some experience of this process of real or imagined shunning.

Sleeping Too Much

Hypersomnia is sleeping too much. And it’s mildly contagious. Kids won’t call each other up or wake each other up if they are aware of their friends’ sleeping pattern: “No use in calling him yet. It’s too early. He’s probably still asleep.

From not only a social perspective but also from a functional perspective, sleeping too much is a way to avoid interactions. It’s a time-honored and wide-spread coping device. It’s the ultimate in wishful thinking. In this maladaptive approach, merely wake up a little later might cause things to change.

Depressed teens are particularly vulnerable to trying to sleep away sadness. It’s true, teens do need extra sleep. Adolescents are already needing extra sleep to grow their brains. What’s an extra hour or two or three of sleep? Especially since I stayed up so late last night watching TV? Lots.

Adolescent depression does not necessarily begin at the first electronic phase in the life. Even though childhood melancholia and preoccupation with a fantasy world of electronics may predict the onset of adolescent depression in a young person, the first experiences of sadness come unexpectedly. Often what challenges kids with stout character and a functional sense of self is an existential crisis. It’s a passing situation. It can be a real or contrived crisis that touches on some story they have made up about themselves–an infinite story about who they are.

Specific social skills become important in addressing the vulnerability experienced by sleep-deprived kids, especially abused, neglected or abandoned kids who are also depressed. For those children and adolescents, sleeping too much can be a fulfilling an avoidance outcome: if I don’t want to be around myself, why should you want to be around me either? Let me reject you before you even have a chance to reject me. And all I have to do to reject you is make you think I need more sleep or am not going to interact with you because “I’m too sleepy.”

Kids Need Sleep to Survive

Hypersomnia is not just sleepy all the time. It can be a cloaking device, a defensive mechanism. It often masks depression, especially in adolescence. It can be a particularly effective smoke-screen if depression is paired with academic deficiencies and social skill deficits.

Skills such as accepting criticism or asking for help or reporting whereabouts are often incompatible with sleeping all day. Even so, the fear of abandonment, and the fear of not fitting in, will factor prominently in the consideration of any child’s motive to remain in bed too long, or a depressed adolescent’s staying in bed until late in the afternoon.

Paradoxically, in this Won’t Go to Bed, Won’t Get Up world, many depressed kids, especially depressed younger children, resist going to bed in the first place.

Often just getting a depressed or anxious child even into the bed is a tour-de-force. They’re scared.

Younger children fear going to bed for many reasons. A child comes to fear real or imagined events, the most extreme of which is the possibility of another shunning expulsion: “If I close my eyes, turn off the senses, and shut out the world, when I wake up, will the world have abandoned me?” Or they fear going to bed, and turning it off, because of real or imagined events in their world, what they’ve seen on TV, what they heard in a ghost story, or even what they imagine is under the bed, might come to life while their eyes are closed.

What’s under the bed is also under the conscious mind. It’s unconscious.

Most kids welcome the relief of going to bed and going to sleep. Many do not. Children and adolescents with depression or anxiety often fight going to sleep.

 Getting Enough Rest

Turning off the world (and the TV) is embracing the unconscious. Helping kids calmly being on purpose about how the world does not go away, but learning how to deal with the world through sufficient rest in vital to growth. Many sad or anxious kids just want continuity around the transition time of going to bed. They long for rituals, ceremony and same-ness.

Kids want to have some assurance that if they close their eyes, turn off the world, and withdraw from their friends and families, they’ll be OK. That you, whoever YOU are, will still be there. They want to know: when I wake up will the world will be the same as when I shut their eyes and shut they world out?

Individual needs are different, but all kids need to sleep.

Tips on Helping Kids Get to Sleep

The National Institutes of Health, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/patientinstructions/000355.htm offers these suggestions:

• Set a regular time for bed each night and stick to it.
• Establish a relaxing bedtime routine, such as giving your child a warm bath or reading him or her a story.
• Make after-dinner playtime a relaxing time. Too much activity close to bedtime can keep children awake.
• Avoid feeding children big meals close to bedtime.
• Avoid giving children anything with caffeine less than six hours before bedtime.
• Set the bedroom temperature so that it’s comfortable — not too warm and not too cold.
• Make sure the bedroom is dark. If necessary, use a small nightlight.
• Keep the noise level low.

That’s where variation on a check-back on a transitioning from wake-to-sleep child come in: it’s merely a different form of reporting your whereabouts. You ask your kid to do this already (“Let me know if you’re going back to your room (or outside or in another part of the house) to play.” Now it’s your chance to model the behavior of checking back and reporting where you are–you’re checking on the almost asleep child.

By checking back during bedtime transitions a parent or caregiver can convey continuity and security to the depressed child or anxious adolescent. You can touch-and-go as they transition from the conscious to the unconscious-world of sleep.

Assure them that you will leave the light off but the door open. That you will be back momentarily. That you will be there and you may just touch them, or kiss them, or merely walk in and out of the room. But you will be there. It’s about BEING present with a depressed child or adolescent. Being with them means you’re not judging, or shaming, or praising. It’s silent. It’s merely walking in and out of the room. It’s merely being with the kid while you touch and go. The frequency will vary. And you tell them that.

Self Soothing: for the time when you’re not in the room, you tell the kid to tell him/her- self: I will wait for the return. I will breathe. I know you will return and BE there for me. And you must remember to breathe too. Engage in the behavior you expect the depressed teen or anxious kid to engage in. Show them.

Practice going-to-sleep rituals earlier in the day. Before dinner or a preferred outing, at a neutral time (when neither the kid nor the day’s schedule is making demands), practice behaviors associated with the go-to-sleep ritual: “OK, let’s pretend it’s bedtime. Pretend I just told you to go upstairs and get ready for bed. Now, what would you do next?” Rehearse it. End on a good note, when you’ve got an approximation of what you want to have happen and reinforce (shape the behavior) the approximation with praise, descriptions and reinforcers.

Functional alternatives include modeling and encouraging reading. Older teens with depression find reading a way to induce a sleep state. Especially useful with sad children is chanting some sacred sound or saying or repeating a bedtime lullaby. Modeling and engaging in the chant or saying it aloud helps, i.e., the parent/caregiver says aloud a positive aphorism: “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite” is a playful example. Or the “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” to the more complex but easily accomplished pairing breath with affirmations: “I am” on
inspiration, “Relaxed” on expiration: “Randi, say to yourself ‘I am’ when you breathe in, and say ‘relaxed’ when you breathe out.”

If you already meditate, or know relaxation techniques, it is easier to teach a depressed or anxious child how to relax. Learning about taming the breath to experience a peaceful way of being is a learned behavior. Younger children feeling anxious respond to repetive reading of books, repetitions of nursery rhymes and declarations of possible positive outcomes including, “sending a happy thought.”

Even early development cynicism can be healthy. If there’s a need to question by kids, that shows growth is present. Plato asserted that the unexamined life was not worth living. It’s not just the case with philosophers, but with depressed adolescents and anxious kids too, especially when they are learning how to go to sleep.

What happens, however, when we adults and caregivers need to be unconscious? When we need to withdraw and recharge ourselves by allowing our body, mind and spirit time to rejuveniate? We learn to relax. Kids need to learn that too. Not just kids on TV, or kids trying to sleep but distracted by the box.