• Encourage your teen to exercise after school or early in the evening. Being physically active too close to bedtime can result in revving you up instead of helping you wind down. However, a few minutes of easy stretching or yoga exercises right before bed can help promote relaxation and sleep.

If your teen is falling off the sleepiness scale, a careful evaluation of her schedule will help make the need for sleep more clear. The following suggestions will then help to make more and better sleep a reality:

• Have your teen keep a sleep log—a record of daily bed and wake-up times (see below for the one my patients use)—for a week or two, including at least two weekends. (Research shows that teens ideally need between eight and a half and nine and a half hours of sleep per night, and the log will show how greatly your teen is sleep