The Pandemic Turned My Daughter Into a Social Vampire

Vampires exist. I know because I live with one. She lives for the night and sleeps most of the day. She rarely sees the sunlight and feeds on the disrupted routine of the quarantine. In other words, she’s a teen during COVID-19.

Like many parents, I seem to have lost that little bit of the hard-won control I had over my kid during this age of physical distancing. The routine that made me feel in command of my family’s world has vanished. Somewhere between the lockdown, online schooling and social distancing, I relinquished some grip over my kid’s modus operandi. Poof went the limitations of screen time; gone were the rules about phones in the bedroom at night. And a bedtime before 2 a.m. has become a relic of the past.

This mom told her daughter to stop worrying. Her daughter retorted that it's what she does. That exchange has this mom reflecting on the words we use to speak to children and teens with anxiety. Read that story here.

The life we once knew has come to an abrupt end, and it's been tough. As a mom of a young teenager during a global pandemic, I’ve frankly been doing what I need to do to scrape by. I’ve picked my battles because this was all supposed to be temporary, remember? I clung to that fantasy for a while. Now I’m wondering how or if we’ll ever be able to get back to the way we were before.

"But I hadn’t expected to raise a teen who had six months of free time on her hands with no real reason to get up."

Over the spring and early summer, my daughter’s schedule was flipped upside down when her school closed. Suddenly her bedtime slipped from 10 p.m. to — gulp! — 3 a.m.. Since she was up most of the night, she would sleep away a good part of the day. By the time I fall into bed at night, she is just coming to life. And when my work day was half over, she was just waking up. I found it disruptive, annoying and frankly, disturbing.

My daughter is 13 and of course, I get that teenagers like to sleep in. And during March break or a summer vacation I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. It’s a rite of passage for this age and who does it really hurt if kids stay up on weekends or holidays? But I hadn’t expected to raise a teen who had six months of free time on her hands with no real reason to get up.

I started to get concerned about how being an insomniac would impact her. Kids were already under so much stress due to the quarantine, combining it with staying up all night seemed like a recipe for disaster. Don’t they need sunlight? Aren’t they missing out on vital vitamin D? And what are they up to while we parents slumber?

Some experts advised letting your kids stay up late and sleep in during this difficult time. After all, they are grieving the loss of so many things — why get on their backs about bedtime? And I agreed with this for a while, but after a couple of months I was getting concerned that this extreme change in sleeping pattern was unhealthy. How would we ever get her back on course when school finally started?

Kids have experienced so much disappointment lately, but Paula has been surprised by how well her daughters have handled it. Read how her family did it here.

According to a Johns Hopkins pediatrician, teens need 9 to 9½ hours of sleep per night. That’s one hour or so more than they needed at the age of 10. Apparently this developmental stage requires extra sleep in order to support brain development and growth spurts. And it is not unusual for their internal clocks to shift to staying up late and sleeping in due to their naturally occurring sleep-wake cycles that make it harder for them to sleep at night.

Kids get there on their own — eventually

But then, one miraculous day, my daughter literally and metaphorically woke up. She seemed to spontaneously realize that these warm days are fleeting. The sensation of sun on your face feels spectacular, and that heading out before noon means that you get to extend a summer day. She finally decided all on her own to take back the day in exchange for a little less of the night.

Now she is beginning high school in Toronto which means she will only go to school half days every other day. I am a little concerned that this new schedule, that doesn't require her to appear in person often, may encourage a return of her night owl ways. We may never get back to what I consider to be a reasonable bedtime. I might not regain some of the control of her that I once had.

But the truth is we aren’t the same people we were back in March when this all started. We have changed in big and little ways we can’t even comprehend quite yet. My daughter has gained some new independence and I’m loosening my reigns on my maturing kid. Through all of this, what I’ve learned is that I don’t have as much control as I once thought. And I’m OK with that.

As long as I can feel the sunlight on my face.