Tired Teens

A Mayo Clinic pediatrician’s guide to the causes of fatigue in teenagers—and finding the care they may need. What happens when a perfectly healthy teen suddenly becomes tired and lethargic? In Tired Teens, Dr. Philip R. Fischer draws upon decades of experience as a pediatrician to pinpoint causes of chronic fatigue in teens and explains how teens and parents can help combat these debilitating conditions. Preparing for college applications, keeping up with schoolwork, and balancing a variety of extracurricular activities, all while maintaining a social life, is causing modern-day teens to become overworked and under-rested. While some students manage to keep up with this packed schedule, many teens go from being A+ students to barely being able to get out of bed in the morning. Some causes of excessive tiredness, like lack of sleep and improper sleep hygiene, can be easy to remedy. However, other causes, like digestive problems, hormonal changes, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), may require more serious care. In Tired Teens, Dr. Fischer explains how to identify the warning signs and symptoms of chronic fatigue in teens, helping you determine if your teen’s excessive tiredness is simply a symptom of a busy schedule, or the result of an unexpected disorder, like autonomic dysfunction and POTS. Finally, the book provides expert advice on receiving an evaluation and diagnosis for adolescent fatigue, and outlines different treatment plans available to those diagnosed with this invisible illness. By simplifying these issues in a clear and digestible way, Dr. Fischer makes it easy for teens and parents to learn how to manage and treat persistent tiredness. Whether you’re a teen experiencing chronic fatigue or the parent of one, Tired Teens offers hope and guidance about how to overcome chronic fatigue and POTS for good.

The New Normal for Your Teen Should Not Be Insomnia Sleep deprivation has become more and more prevalent in the teenage years. Insomnia, sleep apnea, poor REM sleep, and waking up exhausted isn't normal. Help your teen regain healthy sleeping habits with the proven, practical, research-based tips in this book. Better sleep strategies. In Let's Talk About Teen Sleep: Why Our Teenagers Are Sleep-Deprived, and How Parents and Schools Can Help Them Thrive, journalist Lisa Lewis does a remarkable job of compiling and breaking down historical facts and data into practical strategies that help your teen develop healthy sleep habits. If your teen wakes up exhausted and walks into school tired, this book has data showing the specific sleeping patterns that your teen should follow to finally sleep well through the night. School, sports, drug usage, and other daily habits have a direct effect on your teens' circadian rhythm. Many of these habits lead to depression, anxiety and fatigue, which can contribute to insomnia. In this book, you'll find real life stories, data, and studies that show the effects of continued insomnia. Read Let's Talk About Teen Sleep and: Discover the root of your teen's insomnia Find help to develop a new effective sleep cycle Learn how sleep deprivation affects your teen's habits and emotions Healthy sleep is possible. Help your teen get their inner sleep cycle back on schedule so that they can live a healthy and full life. Sleep training is possible even in the teen years. Let's Talk About Teen Sleep can help your teen finally get a good night's sleep. If you enjoyed books like Why We Sleep, It's Never too late to Sleep Train, or The Sleep Revolution, then you'll love Let's Talk About Teen Sleep.

Every week new discoveries about the brain make the news, often promising parents the latest “right” way to nurture their kids’ developing brains and behavior. And every day there’s a new technology that demands your child’s attention, a new game or toy that purports to make your kid smarter, and a new snack promising to be healthy as well as tasty. How’s a busy parent to make heads or tails of all these claims? You turn to Dr. David Walsh, an expert at translating the headline-making, cutting-edge findings into practical suggestions for parenting today. In his previous bestseller, Why Do They Act That Way?, Walsh showed how to manage the difficult teenage years by understanding how the adolescent brain develops. Now he’s written a complete guide to parenting from birth through the teen years, with recommendations that will help maximize any child’s potential. Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids doesn’t just describe new research findings or explain interesting brain facts. It equips parents with usable information across a range of topics, like exercise, nutrition, play, sleep, stress, self-discipline, emotional intelligence, and connection. Some discoveries in neuroscience confirm age-old parental wisdom while others may prompt you to make immediate changes. Still other brain discoveries help explain behaviors that have puzzled parents forever, like why friendly, easygoing kids can become withdrawn and sullen dragons overnight when they enter adolescence, or why girls and boys tend to have such different classroom experiences. Filled with helpful quizzes and checklists for easy reference, Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids gives specific advice about how to make the best daycare, preschool, and schooling decisions for your kids; for example, how to deal with stressful events as a family, and how to manage your child’s internet and media use. And all these findings across different fields of research work together in reaching the same goal: When children are guided to eat, sleep, play, exercise, learn, and connect with others in healthy ways, their minds blossom and they are able to reach their full potential—academically, socially, physically, and emotionally. These real-life applications in Dr. Walsh’s new book put science into practice with a personal plan that explains how (and why) you can parent with the brain in mind.

Turn off the light. Turn off your phone. Turn off anxious thoughts. Do you have trouble getting to sleep at night? You aren’t alone. There are so many reasons teens today have a difficult time going to sleep—including early school start times, too much late-night screen time, or just being anxious about what the future holds. You are at an important crossroads in your life, so it’s natural to feel overwhelmed at times. But it’s essential that you get the sleep you need. This book can help. Written by a renowned sleep expert, Goodnight Mind for Teens offers tips based in proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you get your zzzs and be your best during the daytime. You’ll learn how to set your own ideal sleep schedule, overcome sleep lag, cope with sleep anxiety, and manage the anxious, over-stimulating thoughts and worries that are keeping you up at night. If you’re ready to start feeling better, less cranky during the day, and more at ease at bedtime, this book has everything you need to… zzzz…

These days, we are constantly reminded of threats to our health and the well-being of our children. They include preservatives, artificial additives, air and water pollution and drug resistant viruses, just to name a few. Thanks to advances in technology, more information than ever is available to us, but with so many sources offering advice, it often leads to confusing and contradictory suggestions about maintaining optimum health. As a result, it is easy to lose track of what the real perils are. The American public has been misdirected. We have substituted myths, snake oil and false advertising for basic good sense and physical hygiene. This book is a refreshing and easy-to-use guide for being naturally healthy and happy again.--From publisher description.

Author Peggy J. Parks tackles a crucial reality of being a teenager, depression. She offers young readers and researchers a means of understanding depression and its ramifications. Readers will be given essential insight into what causes depression, how people live with it, and the latest information about diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

Discussions about prisoners often take for granted that a sizable number of those incarcerated are under the age of eighteen. Serving time as a teen has a unique set of challenges, and this book describes, in a relatable way, the issues facing young people behind bars both in the United States and abroad. The book includes information about teens incarcerated around the globe, including those who are economic prisoners forced to work to pay off familial debts. This volume also sheds light on what life is like for teens after their sentence has been served.

Creative Arts-Based Group Therapy with Adolescents provides principles for effective use of different arts-based approaches in adolescent group therapy, grounding these principles in neuroscience and group process practice-based evidence. It includes chapters covering each of the main creative arts therapy modalities—art therapy, bibliotherapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, music therapy, and poetry/expressive writing therapy—written by respected contributors who are expert in the application of these modalities in the context of groups. These methods are uniquely effective for engaging adolescents and addressing many of the developmental, familial, and societal problems that they face. The text offers theory and guiding principle, while also providing a comprehensive resource for group therapists of diverse disciplines who wish to incorporate creative arts-based methods into their practice with teens.