Mom Talk Q&A: Kids Sleeping in Your Bed

Moms Talk is a new feature on Germantown Patch that is part of a new initiative on our Patch sites to reach out to moms and families.

Germantown Patch invites you and your circle of friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families right here in Germantown.

Each week in Moms Talk, our Moms Council of experts and smart moms take your questions, give advice and share solutions.

Moms, dads, grandparents and the diverse families who make up our community will have a new resource for questions about local neighborhood schools, the best pediatricians, 24-hour pharmacies and the thousands of other issues that arise while raising children.

Moms Talk will also be the place to drop in for a talk about the latest parenting hot topic. Do you know of local moms raising their children in the Tiger Mother's way and is it the best way? Where can we get information on local flu shot clinics for children? How do we talk to our children about the Tucson shootings? How can we help our children's schools weather their budget cutbacks?

So grab a cup of coffee and settle in as we start the conversation today with a question about children sleeping in bed with their parents.

Question: What is the right age is for children to stop sleeping in your bed with you. Is this an issue you are faced with now? How do you handle this issue, if you consider it an issue at all?

Lynn Ellis: Personally, we’ve never had children sleep in bed with us for any extended period of time.  As infants, my children were in bassinets next to the bed, but not actually in the bed.  As they got older they moved into their own rooms/beds.  However, thunderstorms, nightmares, illness, and Sunday mornings are the exception.  

As parents, the bed is our space - just as they have their own space.  Sharing our space only occasionally, makes it all the more special.  I doubt that everyone snuggled up together on a slow and lazy Sunday morning watching TV and talking would be as special if they were there every day.

Kristen Kirchhofer: There were times where we had a couple of the children crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night for various reasons.  Having six children all very close in age was hard when they were little.  So having them come into bed with us when they were fussy helped “keep the peace” at the time.  Not saying that it's overall a good thing to have children sleeping with the parents all the time.  Everyone needs their own place to sleep and can prove to be disruptive if someone is always waking up.  Although on occasion, having your little one snuggle with you can be fun!

Susan Burkinshaw: This question is very timely. With two boys ages 13 and 15 and a 9 year old girl, this had not been an issue for us for years--until this week! My oldest nursed for three months (I kept him in bed with me) until I went back to work full-time. He transitioned very easily to his crib and then on to his own bed. My second son nursed longer and also continued to get up for 2:00 a.m. feedings well into his first year.

He also had chronic ear infections well into his toddler years, which made night-time difficult for him, so he spent a lot of time in our bed--until his sister was born, when he was four, and he was displaced. He then transitioned nicely to his own room.

My youngest enjoyed nursing longer than her brothers, since by then I wasn’t working  full-time. She had a very difficult time sleeping alone until she was close to 7--she too was plagued with chronic ear infections that often made sleeping difficult. She also couldn’t understand why mommy and daddy got to sleep together, but she had to sleep alone! We finally cut the cord with her.

This week, with another ear problem, she was back in my bed in the middle of the night. Once I realized she was there I moved her back into her room, but she was back again last night with ear pain. Our solution to this problem over the years has been to allow the kids to “camp out” on our floor, which she did last night, when they are scared or otherwise aren’t feeling well enough to sleep alone--this at least gives them the support of knowing someone is close by, but keeps them out of our sleeping space.

In my experience you have to strike a balance, especially with kids who have chronic pain and parents (like me!) who wouldn’t get any sleep unless the kids are in the bed with them. Some cultures embrace a family bed, others don’t, but every family is different, every child is different and you have to figure out what works for you so everyone sleeps comfortably and gets enough rest.

Allison Milutinovich: We’ve never really had what you might call a “family bed” - our kids have always slept in their own cribs, pretty much from the get-go. That wasn’t necessarily my preference - there were plenty of desperate nights and early mornings during the newborn stage where I would have KILLED to have a baby that slept peacefully in bed with me! Instead, they seem to have inherited my need to have my own space while I sleep :-). My kids are still young, though, and we have our fair share of middle-of-the-night wake-ups. We handle them by going down to the upset child’s room to comfort him/her. It works for now, because my daughter is still in a crib, and my son (4 years old) still acts as though he sleeps in a crib - even though he’s been in a regular bed for over 2 years, he won’t get out of it by himself! So far, we have yet to have anyone appear by the bedside at 2 am requesting to jump in our bed because of a nightmare - YET! I imagine that is coming, though, and so I appreciate my fellow moms’ responses, and some of the approaches they have used.

As parents, we want to comfort our kids when they are upset. They rely on us for that, and I wouldn’t want to let them down. I’m hoping that if and when I’m faced with requests from my kids to sleep in our bed, I will try to find some alternative strategies that work for all of us, helping them to feel better, but leaving our bed as an adults-only space.

If giving in is the only trick that works, though, then I’ll likely have some co-sleeping nights in my future. I just hope we can somehow prevent it from becoming an every-night habit!