Children Sleeping in your bed.

At just over 4 years of age I think my son has only ever slept in our bed once when he was really sick. I think the real reason for this was that my wife slept sounder knowing that he was there. He had spent most of the day in hospital that day as he had stopped breathing and we thought we had lost him forever. Now if you try and even suggest that he might sleep in our bed because he's not well, he's adament that he won't be. Just the way I like it - no feet in the back & no risk of soggy sheets in the morning.

My daughter slept with me until she was about 12 (i was divorced). Big mistake, i almost never got her to sleep in her own room. After i remarried and had my sons i promise they went straight to their own bed as soon as they left the bassinet! Not that they didn't come get in bed with us sometimes, of course they did, it just wasn't a nightly thing.

Well, if she is 14 and sleeping with you occasionally then she hasn't really left the bed, has she? :) Our youngest slept with us until she was 5. I think it depends on the child. Ours had night terrors and would sleep walk so I wanted to keep her close by so that I was right there to comfort her. Ya. I think it depends on the child.

I have never been a believer in sharing our bed with our daughter - i think the longer you leave it the harder it is to get them in to their own bed as they wont want to be there. Our daughter was in a bassinet for 6 months which was in our room & then once we had a cot she was in the nursery in her cot & everything has worked out wonderfully for us. Our little miss will climb in to our bed when she wakes in the morning but ONLY if she's up before we are - otherwise she sleeps in her own room! I guess it depends on what parenting techniques you choose to use as some people insist on sharing their beds with their kids (which means no alone time for parents) & it also means, it can take a while for a child to be ok with sleeping in their own bed & room. Other people, like us, believe the earlier a child learns where their bedrooms & bed are the easier it is for everyone. I am currently 8 months pregnant & don't think i could handle having our toddler in our bed every night as i wouldn't get enough sleep, there would be no alone time for my partner & i & then it would be very difficult once the baby arrives. Each to their own but for me personally, allowing a child to sleep in their own beds/cots etc from day 1 was the best thing we could have done!

Honestly i dont think it is appropriate at all at any age. I was young when i had my son and when i split from his dad and got my own place he sleep with me and then when i was able to afford a bed for him it took me for ever for him to sleep in it by himself. After dealing with that i have not let my other two child sleep with me and my husband. They all have there own beds and that way they can still feel secure because we are only a room away if they need us. This teaches a child to beable to go to sleep on there own if they happen to wake up in the night.

I'm 28, I have my own room but refer to sleep with my mom and my father sleep in the other room coz he has an athritis, it cause them sleepless nights. In that way, we established open communication with my mother. It's important to us coz I'm working now and only at that time when we prepare to sleep, we have a conversation before falling asleep. Sometimes my 38 years old sister joins us. I think it depends to children until when they want to sleep with their parents. For me, if parents let their children do that they are more closer to each other than children who choose to sleep to their own room alone.

We practice attachment parenting and our children are welcome in our bed when they want to be there. Most of the time, it is our three year old... but he usually wants to sleep by himself and the 8 year olds... well, sometimes they'll go in there and lay down before DH and I get to bed...they go in there to play a board game or something and fall asleep... but generally, at their ages, they sleep in their own beds, but if they are ill or if I feel like one of them will be having seizures (one of them behaves oddly when he's going to have seizures) then they're in bed with us. I think it would be "weird" to have a teenager in bed with us, LOL... but yeah, I mean, it seems like mom and daughter would want security if Dad/DH was on the road...that doesn't seem weird to me at all. I think its silly to think the child will never leave the bed, though...LOL, they do when they're ready.