Do your infants & toddlers sleep with you?

I am aware that in some cultures it is considered normal for the children to sleep with parents until the age of 3 or 4. I know that there has been a recent trend in America towards the family bed. However, I don't see this as a good thing. It's one thing if you are living in a yurt or grass hut in the Congo but in a civilized society there's no reason for this to occur.

How do you have sex with your spouse when you have an 18 month olds foot in the small of your back?

Maybe if I hadn't witnessed a few friends do this and end up having what myself and others considered to be unusually, clingy children I would be all for it. I dunno?

Shhh...My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me)
By TARA PARKER-POPE
October 23, 2007
A few years ago, my daughter told me about a dream involving a giant bag of Doritos. The crinkles in the package had formed a sort of ladder, and she had climbed them to reach the giant chips inside. “It was such a good dream, Mom,” she told me.

The Doritos dream is just one of the countless parent-child memories that I have experienced in the middle of the night. Since she was an infant, my daughter, now in the third grade, has shared my bed and my sleep. I certainly never expected to be a “co-sleeping” parent, but sharing a bed was simply easier when she was a baby still breast-feeding, and getting her out of the bed as she got older has been next to impossible.

In most of the world, sleeping next to your child is a necessity: families of limited means live in cramped quarters. But in the affluent West, the practice is widely frowned on, not just by grandparents and friends, but by the medical community at large.

Still, it is far more common than many people think. Nearly 13 percent of parents in the United States slept with their infants in 2000, up from 5.5 percent in 1993, according to a report last month in the journal Infant and Child Development. Countless children start the night in their own beds, only to wake up a few hours later and pad into their parents’ bedrooms, crawling into the bed or curling up nearby on the floor.

Ask parents if they sleep with their kids, and most will say no. But there is evidence that the prevalence of bed sharing is far greater than reported. Many parents are “closet co-sleepers,” fearful of disapproval if anyone finds out, notes James J. McKenna, professor of anthropology and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame.

“They’re tired of being censured or criticized,” Dr. McKenna said. “It’s not just that their babies are being judged negatively for not being a good baby compared to the baby who sleeps by himself, but they’re being judged badly for having these babies and being needy.”

In fact, research shows that parents often talk about their children’s sleep habits in terms of where the child starts off the night or where the child is supposed to sleep — not necessarily where the child usually ends up sleeping.

In a series of studies in Britain, scientists interviewed parents about their children’s sleep habits, but also used infrared cameras to monitor the parents’ bedroom. The children often spent part of the night in the adults’ bed, but in about half those cases, the parents did not reveal that unless they were specifically asked. As a result, many experts say most of the data in the United States vastly understates how common the practice really is.

One reason may be that adults feel guilty because pediatricians frown on co-sleeping. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said babies should sleep close to their parents but not in the same bed. The concern is that a sleeping parent could trap a baby in bed covers or in the space between the bed and the wall.

Although some studies suggest bed sharing puts children at higher risk for sudden infant death syndrome, the data are not conclusive. And some researchers say the risk is higher only if parents smoke, drink too much alcohol and fail to take proper precautions to make sure the bed is safe.

One common concern is whether the practice interferes with the development of healthy sleep habits. For example, studies in Italy, China, the United States and elsewhere have consistently found links between co-sleeping and frequent night wakings.

But the studies are generally based on reports from the parents themselves, and some researchers question whether such data are all that meaningful. Kathleen Dyer, an assistant professor of child, family and consumer sciences at California State University, Fresno, says this measurement bias may lead scientists to overstate the problems associated with bed sharing.

In one study, for example, 139 parents were asked about the sleep habits of their young children. Parents who slept with their children reported a much higher frequency of nighttime wakings than parents who did not.

Of course, Dr. Dyer says. “When you’re sleeping with your kid and he wakes up once during the night, you know about it because you’re there,” she said. “If he’s in the next room, he’s still waking up at night, but you just don’t see it.” The more important question, she says, is whether the parents regard nighttime wakings as a problem. “What the researcher thinks is a problem,” she said, “is often not what the family thinks is a problem.”

Another fear is that bed sharing will take a heavy toll on a marriage. That is certainly likely if the parents disagree about where a child should sleep. But in cases where both parents agree on the sleeping arrangement, parents who sleep with their children are typically as happy as parents of solitary sleepers.

In a paper last month in Infant and Child Development, Dr. Dyer proposed that co-sleeping families fall into three distinct categories. There are intentional co-sleepers — those who sleep with their children because they want to breast-feed for a long stretch and believe bed sharing is good for a child’s well-being and emotional development. Another group is reactive co-sleepers, those parents who don’t really want to sleep with their kids, but do so because they can’t get their children to sleep any other way or because financial hardship requires them to share a room with a child.

My son slept with me when he was a baby, but that stopped when he was about 15 months old. There were two main reasons he slept with me... for one, he would cry hysterically if he didn't (for hours on end...), and for two, I was usually so exhausted that we just fell asleep together all over the house. He and I have slept together in my bed, in the recliner, on the couch, and yes - even on the living room floor. I was so totally exhausted that I just kinda fell asleep wherever because I was too tired to move once he fell asleep. (In case you are wondering why I was so exhausted - my son slept for about an hour and a half at a time, and would spend 5-6 hours awake inbetween naps - that is NOT much sleep.) He rarely sleeps with me now - usually when he's sick or had bad dreams. But he has his own bed, and he goes in it every night. The only bad thing is, if he DOES wake up in the middle of the night and he chooses to come into my room to sleep, he can do so as much as he wants because I NEVER wake up to it. There have been numerous times where I have gone to bed alone and woken up with company, with no recollection as to when, during the night, the change had occurred.

My husband and I have co-slept with our son in a co-sleeper as an infant and in our bed as he's gotten older. Transitioning him to his bed and his room wasn't that hard at all. It's worked out very well for us, and I don't think my son is overly clingy. In fact, he's one of the more independent children I know.

there's nothing quite like a very close physical bond with a child. in the early 20th century it was thought that any close physical affection was bad for children, and it was eventually disproven. we still have some of the remnants of that thought in our culture. the physical bond we have as a family is magical, and, in fact, this type of bonding is what a lot of psychologists use to help "reparent" errant children with some success.

it worked for us.

plus, sex is a lot more fun all over the house and not in our bed, yanno?

I surely don't see anything wrong with co-sleeping. In fact, i think the closeness is probably good for a young-one's emotional development.

No - if they were upset at night, one of us would usually take them back to their bed and stay with them until asleep.

Sometimes got in with us in the mornings, but never a regular, "normal" thing.

I'm not sure what I'd do if I had children - I'd be so afraid of crushing or suffocating them. Allow me to ponder further.

we used one of these:

Arm's Reach Co-sleeper & Accessories

Unless drunk or on drugs, you won't crush your child. Though asleep, our brains and bodies still function like normal. I have never rolled over on my son. But, on several occasions, I have woken up in an attempt to roll over when I realized that he was there.

My kids slept with us occasionally but never on a regular basis. Usually when they were sick, or had bads dreams. It is possible to have a regular sex life when the kids are young even if they are sharing your bed.

With the wife working nights, it is usually easier to have her in our bed with me. The wife does the same during the day. On the weekends when we are both off, we may put her to sleep in the bed, but we will put her in her crib so we can remember what it was like to be romantic.

I bet you say that to all the sailors.

This makes sense, this I could handle. That's not what my friend did though. From birth to about 5 years old their son slept in their queen size bed with them. He did have a rather nice room decorated in his favorite Blue's Clues decor with a twin size bed, toy box, dresser and normal bedroom accoutrement. He would sometimes play in his room on rainy days.

Honestly, it's whatever works for the parent()s. Before I had my son I worked for a man who would keep his toddler in a crib for hours, many times screaming, and go work in a separate building on their property. If not in her crib, she was strapped into her highchair for hours while he worked in the other building. Hearing her scream and the entire experience really turned me off of cribs. When I had my son I never wanted him in one crying by himself. It made more sense to me to have him in the co-sleeper or in our bed. Now he gets to pick-- his bed and if he gets scared, he can walk into our room. Having him confined, alone, really bugged me.

I just asked my mom. What she did, and what apparently most of the folks back in my old neighborhood did was the baby slept in a bassinet in the parents room until it was too big for it, then the baby made the transition to a crib in their own room. Like most little kids if I had a bad dream, got cold, or thought there were monsters in my closet, etc I would make a mad dash to my parents bed.

I also have a friend whose daughter slept with them almost every night until she was 19 years old! Now, I don't care what y'all say, that's friggin' ass weird!

Well on the one hand, I'd endorse it because its how I was raised...

...but on the other hand maybe that's what messed me up so bad.

Hmmmm...

My nephews are pretty independent. But occasionally, they all have night terrors to which Uncle Jory comes to the rescue. (when they stay with me). I'll end up putting them back to bed and tell them that I'll stay up and beat up those mean 'ol monsters and give 'em what for!! I'll wait until they're asleep, then I'll go crash. (usually doesn't take long.). It never fails. The next day they're asking me why I'm so tired. I just tell them that I put a serious whoopin' on that monster that scared them so bad and for waking me up from my beauty sleep. Then they start asking me all kinds of questions about the monster and want blow-by-blow details of the fight.

My nieces are different. It seems like I'm their personal giant sleeping pillow. Neither of them seem to be scared by monsters, but sometime in the middle of the night, they'll get up and hop into my bed without me knowing about it.

On car trips, they ALL use me as their personal giant sleeping pillow. My brothers tell me that they won't do that to anyone else. Makes me feel all kinds of special.

But when they were much younger, they all had their own rooms right from the start.

OH!!! OH!!! OH!!! I just found out!!!
I'm going to be an uncle again!! She will be born Nov 21st!!