Do you often find yourself dealing with a human sloth in your house in the form of a teenager? If you have a question popping up in your mind, “Why is my teenage daughter so lazy?” things may not be as they seem.
We often call teenagers lazy, but the thing is, you have to remember how you felt in this period of your life and note that everyone is different. Sadly, half the time, this perceived laziness is actually their biology.
No one really wants to laze around all day and do nothing or spend all day in bed. If we have the energy and willpower, we will always be doing something; we’re naturally active creatures, but there are often things that get in the way. So, what is the truth about your teens’ laziness?
Is It Laziness?
The first question you need to ask is if this is real and genuine laziness. Is what you perceive to be laziness perhaps something else? Has your teen complained about feeling tired? Unwell or sad?
Remember when you were a teen? It’s not the most pleasant time of life, and many things can sap our energy levels at this point in our lives.
Consider the possibility that your teen is not being lazy by choice before you get frustrated. Here are some things to remember before you are judging with why my teenage daughter is so lazy!
She experiences hormonal changes
Your teen is surging with more hormones than there are fish in the sea. Once we start puberty, our bodies go crazy. There’s a shift of hormonal change that make your daughter confused. She will easily get irritated, tired, and exhausted despite not having any stressors that cause those feelings. Their bodies are literally changing, and that does take energy.
While your child might have been fine on 7 hours of sleep before, now they’re a teen. They need more sleep to give them the energy they need to deal with all these biological changes! According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), teenagers around 13 to 18 years old need around 8-10 hours of sleep.
However, while it is normal to feel tired and lazy as they go through biological changes, it can be even worse for girls. If it is ‘shark week,’ they will feel even more tired.
The female body is naturally more tired during ‘that time of the month.’ And that’s why they will need more sleep and will sometimes feel hungry more. So, if you find your daughter spending a week on the couch eating potato chips and snapping at you, it’s just her biology.
Also, do not forget that not every woman has a nice and ‘neat’ monthly visit from the lady in red. Some women will naturally suffer from endometriosis, menorrhagia, and other issues related to having a uterus. Note most of these will only become apparent as they hit puberty.
These issues bring about a lot of pain and can lead to chronic fatigue and other health conditions. So, if your teen daughter has started menstruating and complains of pain while acting lazy, perhaps a trip to the doctor is worth it. It might not be a fault of theirs.
Why do teenagers need more sleep?
You may not realize that teenagers actually need a few hours more to sleep than adults. CDC mentioned that they require around 8-10 hours to function properly. A study backed up this statement, showing that a proper sleeping schedule will help their body grow fast as they are now in puberty. Their bodies go through emotional, physical, and biological changes, which need massive energy. In addition to sleep hours, maintaining health and nutrition is also crucial in this phase. You can help them by providing nutritious food.
Watch out for depression!
Not only is your teen so packed with hormones they could burst, but your social life will be hard. Bullying is a constant in teen years, but you must also note that it is not as simple as name-calling.
Some teens (especially girls) get verbal and physical abuse by their peers for how they look, body-shaming, assaults, and more. This is one of the most trying parts of this period of life, and a majority of teens do suffer from depression, anxiety, and other issues that stem from this. So, depression may be the answer to the question, “why my teenage daughter is so lazy?.
If your teen is depressed, they will seem lazy because depression literally ‘takes it out of you’ and will make you feel like doing nothing.
Is depression linked to laziness?
One of the signs of depressed folks is feeling lazy as they experience energy decline from time to time before it eventually collapses. Besides, this mental health issue also makes the person feels unworthy and demotivated. In other words, they will lose interest in all the things they love before suffering from depression.
Why do people with depression start acting like they are okay?
Some people with depression may hide their true feeling by acting like they are fine. So, it will be nice to always check on your loved ones, for instance, asking if they are okay these days. This simple gesture means a lot to people who suffer from mental health issues.
You can also accompany them through this hardest time by encouraging them to share what they feel. It may not help that much, but at least you share ears to listen. Don’t interrupt when they start talking about their problems, nor underestimate their feeling. If you do this, they will likely shut down and won’t tell you a thing anymore.
Nonetheless, you must be aware if they start to show signs of suicide or self-harm. Please contact a mental health professional to schedule a session immediately. As time goes by, therapy will help unwind the issues the sufferer has and treat them with medications or therapies to ease the depression.
Your teenage daughter is under massive stress
However, it does not have to be depression; stress alone can tire you out. Now, you might think that your teen has it easy, but with the peer pressure of fitting into society, having friends and a good social life, and being a productive member of the household… it gets too much, especially while they’re struggling with their own bodies too.
Academic stress, for example, will easily make them overwhelmed. It will get worse if parents demand the kids always do well in school with excellent marks.
They may be stressed, which will make them fatigued, burn out, and have no motivation to do chores which ends up in procrastination. “What’s the point” will be a question often going through their heads. Stress can also change their sleep habits. These teens tend to sleep late at night and wake up at noon.
Sleep Deprivation
On top of all this, sleep deprivation is not uncommon in teens, which will exacerbate them. Note that many teens need much more sleep than you do because of those pesky hormones.
A teen should get 8 to 10 hours of sleep, but most only get 6.5 to 7.5. This could be due to trying to study, catch up on homework, do chores, and have a brimming social life. Or, perhaps, they are simply poor in time management to handle everything all at once.
Adolescents are biologically likely to sleep in later and wake up mid-morning than adults. So, when they have to get out of bed at 8 AM to go to school, their natural cycle is thrown off, and they will be unmotivated, lazy, and drowsy.
Too Much Screen Time
Screen time and physical activity need a balance. It is difficult for young adults as most of their social life and education will be on a screen, and so to be functioning members of society, they become glued to their screens. And here, a good parent-child relationship works and is much needed.
Make sure they are off screens for at least 1 hour before bed to help them wind down. Encourage physical activity, and be a good role model, staying off your phone yourself. It teaches them about self-discipline and responsibility in managing time for entertainment and social life.
Talk To Them
Do not get angry with them for being ‘lazy’. Talk to them and let them know that they can talk to you about what is going on. It might be that something deeper is making them tired.
You do not want to discourage them from talking to you if it is their emotional well-being that is causing their laziness. Talk to them calmly and kindly, and you might be able to help them with the issues that led to their laziness.
To Conclude
It is so easy to get frustrated with a lazy teen but remember! No teen is lazy for no reason. There is always a reason behind it, so your first priority is to make sure they are okay. Also, it’s your job to guide and accompany them when they go through such hardship in dealing with their mood and perhaps depression.
Encourage them to talk, but don’t force them. Find the time when you can just start a convo between you two, eyes to eyes, heart to heart. That way, you can dive deeper into finding out what your teenage daughter feels.
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Over the years, I have seen my fair share of teenage issues. I have also seen plenty of worried parents at a loss of what to do with their children.
My aim with Talking Teenage is to put a stop to this and help you to communicate with your teenagers better. This will leave you with a better relationship and help you to keep such a close bond.
Please take the time to read my website and learn anything you can - we were all teenagers once!
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