YOUR CHILD Sleeping In Parents’ Bed Should Be Stopped

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32018, 19 June 1969, Page 3

YOUR CHILD Sleeping In Parents’ Bed Should Be Stopped

(By NEIL THOMAS) I know several children who often sleep in their parents’ bed. One of them actually forces her father out of bed. When this four-year-old fears the dark or feels ill she crawls in with her mother, and her father mumbles and grumbles down the hall, and sleeps the rest of the night in daughter’s bed. In another home midnight frequently finds two children curled up with their parents. This is not good. Parents who allow it may believe that they are being loving and attentive. In reality these parents are hindering their children’s development. They are teaching their children to depend upon their parents. They should be teaching the children to be independent and self-confident. At some time in his . life the child must learn to sleep in his own bed and bedroom. He will no doubt have to sleep this way for the rest of his life. The sooner you can help him to sleep alone, the healthier his sleeping habits will be. The happier and the healthier, too, his attitudes to rest and sleep will be. The habit of sleeping with parents can begin at. infancy, or several years after. For example, the baby who is sheltered in his parents'

bedroom for his first year is off to a bad start./ It is not necessary for him to spend even his first' night home in his moither’s bedroom, and certainly not a night over six months. The newly-home baby will learn healthier sleeping habits it he starts off in his own room, which certainly should be within earshot of his parents’ bedroom. When the baby is upset, soothe him in his room. When you take him into your room or into your bed for the night you sow the seeds for a harvest of bad sleeping habits. Be consistent in this. Letting your child sleep with you “until he’s a little older” is no good. When he is a little older, he will have difficulties breaking the bad habit. These difficulties might stay with him for the rest of his nights. Besides, the child of two or three years will not know the significance of being “a little older.” A child who learns good sleeping habits can easily lose them later. He may have a bad cold, or be teething, or have a bad dream. His parents comfort him in their bed for a few night. Away go his good sleeping habits. Next time he is ill or afraid of the dark, he heads for his mother’s bed. If your toddler is upset some night, by all means comfort him. But comfort him in his own room. If he is afraid of the dark he must learn that darkness in his bedroom holds no evil. Take

him into your bed and you take him away from the “evil

darkqess.” All that he learns is that the darkness in his parents’ room is safer than that in his bedroom. If your child frequently sleeps in your bed, try to break the habit now. If you delay, you will make the break harder for your child. Breaking the habit now may mean a few nights of unhappiness; but breaking the habit next year might mean three weeks of misery. By breaking the habit, by never allowing it to start, you help your child learn selfconfidence. You really encourage him to grow up, to look this world in the eye—and to learn to live in it