I was today years old when I learned I don’t come from a “sleep supportive family.” As Dana Joy Seigelstein describes it in her now viral TikTok video, a sleep supportive family is when the loved ones in your life encourage sleep. They don’t care if you take naps throughout the day, and they suggest you go to bed early or sleep in on the weekend if you’re not feeling well.
Despite the fact that I come from a very loving “living room family” that supported me through school, sports, and my expensive Limited Too phase, let’s just say my parents and siblings weren’t the most sleep supportive. What do I mean by that? No naps allowed. Ever. This wasn’t a rule ever said out loud, per say, but it was definitely implied, especially on the weekends.
If I so much as closed my eyes on the couch or spent a few extra minutes in my bedroom alone, I would have to endure passive-aggressive comments from my sisters for the rest of the day like, “Good morning, princess” or “Oh, are you done being lazy?” My parents would also decide that if I had enough time in the day to take a nap, I would have enough time to complete a new chore when I woke up. How fun!
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As a result, I basically got trained out of napping altogether. And to this day, I physically can’t fall asleep in the middle of the day no matter how exhausted I am. Meanwhile, my boyfriend can snooze whenever, wherever – a result I’d imagine comes from him being raised in a sleep supportive family.
Naps weren’t the only issue in my household, though: sleeping in was also not recommended. (Again, never a rule said out loud, but always implied. I’m sensing a theme here.) If I slept in too late, I’d wake up to different people taking turns poking their head into my room to see what I was doing – not in a loving, “Hey, I’m checking in on you way” but in a “Why are you still sleeping?” way.
No one in my family ever got mad necessarily, but I definitely always had a larger list of things to do when I slept in a little later than usual. So what did I do? I stopped sleeping in entirely and became a morning person. Though I love being a morning person now in adulthood, it’s definitely by way of trauma and not because I learned to love being a morning person on my own.
That said, my family has never been completely non-sleep supportive. They didn’t enforce a strict bedtime, and if I wasn’t feeling well, they would let me stay home from school with no questions asked. In their own way, that was them being sleep supportive, which I appreciate.
But now that I’m an adult, I’ve started to reframe what sleeping in looks like for me. And though I can’t sleep in as late as I want to (largely thanks to a dog that demands to be let out every morning at 7:30 a.m.), I still go back to bed and close my eyes afterward. Can I fall back asleep? No. But I can quiet my mind knowing that I give myself permission to lie in bed for as long as I want with no extra chores to wake up to.
And when it’s time for future me to have children and be a mom, I plan on breaking the cycle. My kids will know the joy of sleeping in on Saturdays without being woken up to mow the lawn or do the dishes. Most importantly though, every nap will be celebrated.
Taylor Andrews is the senior balance editor at Popsugar, specializing in topics relating to sex, relationships, dating, sexual health, mental health, travel, and more. With eight years of editorial experience, Taylor has a strong background in content creation and storytelling. Prior to joining PS in 2021, she worked at Cosmopolitan.
