Napping

Since my presentation I’ve been looking into adolescents and napping, and I’ve found that there are a very limited number of studies on the effects of napping and adolescents other than it being just thrown in with the sleep they get at night.  I did find one study with 231 adolescent participants that was done to test a correlation between napping and dysfunctional cognitions and negative effects. I was most interested in the number of nappers verse non-nappers in their sample. 65, or 32%, were nappers, which they defined as adolescents that habitually napped at least twice a week compared to 140, or 68%, who were non-nappers. So the nappers were still a significant third of the group compared to my number of kids that have bed times. Napping could be an alternative to going to bed earlier because  teenagers seem to have an easier time self-regulating naps, no one tells them to take them, they just listen to their bodies and sleep. Interestingly enough the study seemed to conclude that napping was not wholly positive.

 “…nappers demonstrated significantly more dysfunctional cognitions, anxiety, and stress symptoms, when compared to non-nappers. In contrast, no significant difference was found for depression.”

It doesn't seem to be an extensively researched and discussed topic which I find surprising considering how many teenagers do take naps.

I found the study on EBSCO so you'll probably have to log in if you'd like to read it, but here's the link.
EBSCOhost Link
Its title is "Adolescent napping behavior: Dysfunctional cognitions and negative affect." if the link doesn't work.