[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Sleeping with or very close to infants under 6 months massively cuts the risk of SIDS. Forcing young children to sleep alone if it causes them distress (e.g. using "cry it out" type methods) is proven to cause psychological damage. I'd also suggest that any good husband wouldn't have to be "kicked" out of bed, as they'd also want to find the best sleep arrangement for their family, but maybe that's just me. I appreciate that many dads are much more detached and like to leave the "kid stuff" to the "womenfolk".

I sleep in the same room as my 4 year old, my partner co-sleeps with our 18 month old. It's by far the best sleeping arrangement for us. They CAN sleep perfectly well alone - they both go to bed at 7 or 8, we're night owls and don't go to bed until 2 or 3am, and we don't hear a peep out of them (barring illness). They would no doubt continue to sleep undisturbed until morning if we, for example, fell asleep on the couch.

We don't technically "need" to co-sleep with them at this point, other than the fact that we only have two bedrooms and there's not a chance in hell that they would sleep well in the same room. When our youngest is 3 or 4 I'm sure that'll be the arrangement. For now, simple logistics make it impossible.

The reasons we STARTED co-sleeping with our eldest, however, are because the complete opposite of the premise of this thread is often true. She was a very distressed baby. Possibly due to hospital trauma in the week after her birth (in retrospect) but for whatever reason, she would scream constantly if one of us wasn't with her, and for three months we were sleeping in shifts with no idea what to do. Eventually, she went in with my partner and slept like a log. So we sort of stumbled on it due to a lack of options, I suppose. Anyway - she was also a very shy, quiet and nervous toddler right up until around 2 and a half. She simply had a nervous, anxious, introverted and sensitive personality type. "Attachment bollocks" parenting, gentle coaxing, and NEVER, EVER forcing her into anything she wasn't ready for has resulted in an extremely social, extremely confident and very independent 4 year old who chatters to anyone and is already showing strong leadership qualities at school. We were recently talking about someone being shy at her pre-school and she said "...what's "Shy"??". There's no doubt in my mind that we got this right.

Most parent's instinct is to "push" their shy children out of their shyness, to "push" their clingy children to be independent. It doesn't work, ever. It's a terrible, terrible mistake. It's probably what this 13 year old boy's parents did to him until they broke him completely, and now they really ARE stuck with a "damaged kid".

But meh. Whatever. Carry on with your arse-backwards western world Supernanny techniques. TBF I don't really give a stuff about what you do with your kids when you have them.

Ok... this is going to sound mad, but if your kids sleep well, and you have to both creep in at silly oclock you say this is preferable to letting them sleep together in one room and you two in another?