Malika
Well-Known Member
My son wants to sleep in my bed with me. In a way, I quite understand - it's warm, it's friendly, it makes him feel secure. But I feel he should be separating out from me at this stage, to some degree, and that the longer he sleeps in my bed, the harder the habit will get to break. We also have an occasional problem with wetting the bed. So this is how it goes... he goes to sleep on the sofa in the sitting room so as to be near me (the compromise we reached in terms of his wanting to be near me and my wanting him to sleep outside my bed...), I wake him up when I go to bed around 11 or midnight so that he can pee, and take him up to his bed which of course in his state of semi-sleep he accepts. But then... unfailingly, around 2 in the morning, he comes into my bed... I don't have the heart to make him go back to his bed at that point, leading to crises and drama in the middle of the night, so he gets to sleep in my bed anyway and the whole thing feels rather pointless! All this is erratic as before we went away to Morocco for the last holiday, he was sleeping more or less in his bed all night.
I don't mind at all him coming into my bed when he wakes up in the morning, as I think this is a nice, cuddly thing to do, but as a single woman with a little boy I feel we are already too wrapped up in each other and it is healthy to encourage his sleeping independence...
What do you think - should I tough it out and make him sleep all night in his bed? Or it doesn't matter and he should sleep with me if he wants to... as he clearly does. I think part of me feels frightened of him still wanting to sleep in my bed at the age of 10 or 11...!
I don't mind at all him coming into my bed when he wakes up in the morning, as I think this is a nice, cuddly thing to do, but as a single woman with a little boy I feel we are already too wrapped up in each other and it is healthy to encourage his sleeping independence...
What do you think - should I tough it out and make him sleep all night in his bed? Or it doesn't matter and he should sleep with me if he wants to... as he clearly does. I think part of me feels frightened of him still wanting to sleep in my bed at the age of 10 or 11...!