As the weather is beginning to slowly thaw and the search for our lighter jacket in the back of the closet is underway, it’s a great time to start talking about Daylight Saving Time, kicking in at 2am on March 10th. The day we switch over to Daylight Saving Time (or DST)—when our clocks “spring forward” an hour—is typically dreaded because it steals an hour of our sleep...but does it really?

If you think about it, what everyone complains about is missing sleep that they wouldn’t have to miss if they just adjusted their sleep schedule. In reality, we can all get a full night of sleep no matter what our clocks say—all it takes is a little planning ahead.

Take it slow

Your body’s biological schedule is pretty stubborn, but it’s also open to change as long as you give it time.

The holidays are just around the corner, and with them is coming that brief reprieve much-anticipated by every young boy and girl: the holiday break from school. While you’re busy making fun-filled plans for your kids and preparing yourself for some noisier weekday mornings, this is also a good time to make sure your kids will still be getting healthy sleep, school night or no.

Check out our tips below for giving your kids the best sleep possible during the upcoming break.

Consistency, with a caveat

Even though the holiday break is a time for your kids to relax free from the rigmarole and restrictions of school, it’s a good idea to make sure they know it won’t be wild anarchy when it comes to their sleep schedule. You want to make

At some point post-childhood, sleep seems to lose a bit of its luster in our eyes, and we start to see it more as a burden than a welcome relief. In truth, sleep becomes that much more necessary in our lives the more we grow and develop. No matter what stage of the game you’re in now, take a look at our rundown on how sleep needs change throughout our lives, as well as some great tips for getting the best sleep of your life—every night.

Adolescents

Along with needing a higher total of sleep than your average adult, the teenage sleep schedule is also quite different. In adolescence, our circadian rhythms are pushed far forward past the more stable rhythm that’s closely aligned with the regular twenty-four hour cycle. This means that teens are much more likely to feel tired later (around eleven p.m.) and want to sleep in the next morning until nine or ten a.m.

Hey there! How did you wake up this morning? Were you up and at ‘em as soon as the first alarm buzzed? Or did you have to hit snooze just once (okay—maybe a couple times)?

Now, maybe it felt good to snuggle inside your blankets for a few minutes more, but, chances are, hitting snooze didn’t change how tired you were overall. As it turns out, hitting the snooze button isn’t really the quick fix that we want it to be. Let’s take a look at why snoozing fails to perform as advertised, as well as some better ways to wake up in the morning:

Broken bits of sleep

Sleep after your first alarm tends to be really shoddy in quality—you hit snooze, sleep a few minutes, hit snooze, sleep a few minutes, hit snooze…it’s very fragmented sleep

Picture this: You fly from New York to Los Angeles on Friday night and start adjusting to Pacific time. On Sunday night, you catch a red eye and abruptly fly back to the east coast: where waking up at 7 a.m. for a Monday morning meeting feels like 4 a.m. to your body. Sounds miserable, doesn’t it?

Well, if you’re like a lot of people, this is exactly what your body is being put through every time you stay up late on the weekends and then try to adjust to a 9-to-5 schedule on Monday. This concept is called “social jetlag” because it’s often a result of socializing on the weekends, and the impacts of chronic fatigue and drowsiness very closely resemble jetlag.