Sleep, Rewritten: Why Kids Sleep, Adults Don’t, and How to Restore the Signal Part 1
If you watch a child fall asleep, it looks effortless. Not because the child is relaxed or well behaved, but because nothing inside them is fighting the process. Sleep is not something the brain turns on. Sleep happens when nothing is left on. That distinction matters. Children fall asleep because their systems are quiet by default. Adults lie awake because their systems never fully stand down. Think of sleep like landing a plane. Kids approach the runway with clear airspace, working instruments, and a cooperative control tower. Adults are trying to land during a storm, with half the gauges flickering, while still answering emails from the cockpit. The issue is not motivation. It is interference. Biological coherence means all systems agree on three things at the same time. What time it is. What state the body is in. And what the priority should be. In children, these signals are aligned. Light exposure matches the sun. Food intake follows hunger. Movement happens outdoors. Stress resolves quickly. Sleep pressure builds naturally. Nothing has to be forced. In adults, those signals are fragmented. People wake before sunrise under artificial light. They eat late while stressed. They spend most of the day indoors. They carry unresolved cognitive load into the evening. They ask the brain to shut off while feeding it stimulation. Sleep does not fail because melatonin is low. Melatonin is low because the brain does not believe it is nighttime. Children do not need magnesium, glycine, mouth tape, white noise machines, or expensive mattresses because none of those fix the root problem. Children do not have chronic circadian drift. They do not live in a constant sympathetic state. Their blood sugar is more stable. Their mitochondria are more efficient. Their nervous systems are not flooded with anticipatory stress. Adults have all of these issues layered together. So adults try to override biology instead of restoring it. That is the sleep industry in one sentence. One of the biggest blind spots in sleep discussions is safety. Sleep is a vulnerable state. The brain will not enter it unless it feels safe at a biological level, not a psychological one. Children feel safe because they are not responsible for outcomes. They are not anticipating tomorrow. Stress resolves quickly in their system. Their environment is predictable. Their bodies trust the signal to let go.