anyone do this?
how old were they?
and how did how did you end up weaning from it if you did?

I would love to hear from you!

Rachel

I did it when I had infants for breastfeeding and c-section reasons. But my brother in law did it until their son was in his early teens. It was a big contension in the family--thinking it was beyond the time when a teen boy should be in a parents bed. I threatened to turn them into Jerry Springer-- the parents got divorced (no kidding? no privacy!) and the new wife wanted no part of a 5'6 13 year old in her bed. So that was the end of it. But I wonder how long it would have gone on if they hadn't divorced.

My son slept with us until he was about 3. He gave it up when he was about 3, although he would still come into our room during a thunderstorm or if he had a nightmare. There's a good book called the Family Bed that goes into the history of parents sleeping with the children. In fact, it wasn't until the 19th century or so that parents didn't sleep with children.

Once in a while, I would get negative feedback from people (I was living in rural Maryland during the 80s) but now people are probably more open-minded.

_________________
Janet Ilacqua

Hi Rachel,

I am the mother of a seven-month-old. We started out cosleeping with her as I nurse her but once she started sleeping through the night at six weeks we began putting her in her crib.

When my son was first born, we co-slept, then at about 2 months he went into his crib. However, that only lasted till he was 6 months old, because I broke my leg at that point and he was still nursing in the night.

After that healed, he moved (Crib and all) into his own room, and for years slept in his own bed. Then when we moved, he was 3, and he occasionally wanted to sleep with mom. The summer before he was four, we had a guest for the summer, so he slept in my room full time (loaning his room out) and it was a little difficult to get him back into his own room. But we did.

Then (around January) my signifigant other at the time, made the big move to spending the night, and since then he has not wanted to sleep by himself. He starts out there most nights, but usually ends up in mom's bed.

He turns 5 next month, and I have explained that boys big enough for kindergarten need to sleep in their own beds. He claims there are monsters and he is scared. So we keep plugging away and on the mornings when he wakes up in his own bed, we make a pretty big deal about it.

So, there you go.

We recently had an 8 year old Korean Homestay student come with a group from his school all the way down here to New Zealand. They mixed up the homestay placements and he ended up alone at our house. His teacher and group co-ordinator visited the first night and told us that the child had never slept a night away from his father whom he slept with every night since the day he was born.

He woke us up 5 times in the night saying he was scared and cold and my husband and I were fed up with his behaviour by the morning, then we found he'd wet the bed.

We sent him to live with another homestay family for the rest of his visit to our country which was another 15 days. We weren't prepared to lose that much sleep for that long when our own 3 children are so independant and easy. He slept with another Korean boy and was happy for the rest of his trip.

I don't understand why some people insist on babying their children and then send them to the other side of the world!

i have two children and we never let either of them sleep in our bed unless they were sick, had a nightmare or other similar "trama."

we don't believe in kids in the bed, ours have been sleeping in their own beds, in their own rooms since they were babies. i've heard too many horror stories about kids sleeping in paren'ts beds then it takes the parents months to "weene" them into their own beds.