From snoring partners to night-owl teens, mismatched sleep habits at home can leave the whole family exhausted. Experts explain how different routines and body clocks in multigenerational homes often disrupt sleep – and what can help everyone rest better.
If you wake up feeling exhausted, as if you’ve barely rested, chances are you are not the only one with a sleep debt. Sleep is often seen as a personal matter. But experts say that poor sleep does not affect just one person at home.
“The truth is that sleep is very much a family affair,” said Dr Shaun Loh, senior consultant ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeon at The ENT, Voice and Snoring Clinic (Napier).
“Our sleep schedules are often shaped by the routines of the people we live with. One person’s sleep and wake times, noise as they go about their activities, device use or medical issues can disrupt the sleep of the bed partner and everyone else sharing the same home,” he added.
Dr Loh pointed out that Singapore’s compact apartment sizes and shared bedrooms can intensify sleep disturbances within a household. Every person’s habits can easily affect other family members.
A snoring partner for instance, can become a major sore point among sleep-deprived couples. This type of sleep disruption is also among the most common reasons why people eventually seek medical help, the experts CNA Women spoke to noted.
Dr Chua Ai Ping, senior consultant at Respiratory Medicine at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, recalled a middle-aged patient who sought medical attention for loud habitual snoring. It disrupted his wife’s sleep and was straining their marital relationship.
“He was found to have severe obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and started on breathing machine treatment,” she said. When his thunderous snoring resolved, their sleep improved too, and so did their relationship.
WHEN DIFFERENT BODY CLOCKS SHARE A SLEEP SPACE
In many multigenerational households, sleep disturbances can get complicated because people at different life stages run on different internal body clocks. This can lead to conflicting sleep-wake schedules.
For families with adolescents, there is a biologically-driven reason why your Gen Z child seems to perk up just as everyone else is sleepy: During adolescence, there is a biological shift known as delayed sleep phase, which causes teenagers to become tired later at night and prefer waking up later in the morning, explained Dr Loh.
“This adjustment is primarily driven by puberty rather than ‘bad habits’, leading teens to remain awake late for homework or device use simply because they are not sleepy. This may disturb younger siblings sharing a room or parents elsewhere in the household,” he said.
On the other hand, their grandparents may experience advanced sleep phase, which means earlier bedtimes and morning awakenings, he added.
A misconception that can further disrupt sleep in households with young children is the belief that they will “knock out”, like adults, when they are exhausted. This is not the case, according to Dr Loh.
