It's six o'clock in the morning, pitch black outside.
My 14-year-old son is fast asleep in his bed.
I flip on the light and physically shake the poor boy awake, because I know that, like ripping off a Band-Aid, it's better to get it over with quickly.
Sound brutal, but perhaps familiar?
Every morning, I ask myself, how can I, knowing what I know, be doing this to my own son?
You see, I'm a sleep researcher, so I know that I'm depriving my son of the sleep he desperately needs as a rapidly growing teenager.
I also know that by waking him up hours before his natural biological clock tells him he's ready, I'm literally robbing him of the type of sleep most associated with learning, memory consolidation, and emotional processing.
But it's not just my kid that's being deprived of sleep.
Sleep deprivation among American teenagers is an epidemic.
Only about one in 10 gets the eight to 10 hours of sleep per night recommended by sleep scientists and pediatricians.
