Thoughts on co-sleeping ?
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I’m a 27 year old single mother and I have a 12 year old son. Recently he’s been knocking on my door in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep and he asks to sleep with me. I’ve been letting him since neither of us really have a problem with it and it’s kind of nice not having to sleep alone every night. However, I’ve heard and seen some things online that seem controversial about co-sleeping with a child past a certain age. I definitely don’t want to negatively affect his development, so I guess what are your thoughts?
I wouldn't worry about cosleeping affecting their development.
The only things you have to worry about is you both getting enough sleep, and any shame or embarrassment they have about cosleeping. -
He tells me he gets scared at night as well. He also has diagnosed hyperactive ADHD which might make him restless at night.
Might consider trying a weighted blanket
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Might consider trying a weighted blanket
can confirm. I sleep way better in winter because of the heavy blankets vs in summer where it's just a sheet.
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I wouldn't worry about cosleeping affecting their development.
The only things you have to worry about is you both getting enough sleep, and any shame or embarrassment they have about cosleeping.Honestly I felt like I slept a lot better lmao
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can confirm. I sleep way better in winter because of the heavy blankets vs in summer where it's just a sheet.
Also has to do with temperature itself, but yes
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Sorry, but that's simply not good advice. Nobody is born with perfect parenting skills and is granted all the answers. In fact, many parents are not fit to raise kids at all, others are simply overwhelmed and need help.
It's very easy to have a kid, not particularly easy to raise one. The idea that all your decisions are magically correct and sound just because it's your own kid and that every parent knows best is simply wrong. It's healthy to doubt yourself and to ask for advice.
Also, parenting science is not quackery. This is an actively researched area and there are real scientific efforts to better understand child development with respect to biology, psychology and neuroscience. These efforts do lead to a better understanding of how kids can be raised and how certain parental decisions might affect a child.
Personally, I'm happy each time parents try to inform themselves and seek the advice of others. That doesn't necessarily mean relying on the answers a bunch of strangers give on social media, but I hope the Fediverse as a whole can do better.
Right now, I can't make the claims you did in your post initially.
You're not causing permanent damage to a child by letting them sleep in your bed.
I wouldn't know that. Intuitively, I do believe that co-sleeping would have a lot of benefits up to a certain age, after the infant stage and dangers of SIDS have passed. However, I could easily imagine that there might be adverse effects after a certain age. Would it be likely to occur after a handful of times? Probably not. Are there any indications on the threshold maybe? Anything to look out for, given the kid might have anything else going on? Maybe.
All information I would have on that subject would indeed be anecdotal though, and so in turn pretty useless. Why the dismissal of an honest attempt at getting educated?I would indeed argue for getting an overview of what science has to say on the matter and then making an individual, informedndecision based on all the additional context I'd have as a parent that I could never cram into a couple of posts on the internet.
Having access to scientific publications, I'll see if I can provide some material later.
People tend to forget that in the past the parents rarely were the ones who raised the kids. It was the grandparents.
Parents have kids, the grandparents raise them, the parents learn how to raise so they then can raise them when they are the grandparents.
Raising a family was generational and cooperative. It's more modern that family units are so small
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He tells me he gets scared at night as well. He also has diagnosed hyperactive ADHD which might make him restless at night.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Ok yeah I suspected a bit as much about the scared thing. Honestly I'm not sure what sort of advice to give to help out for that sort of thing. I never told anyone that I got scared at night...just lived with it until it eventually went away.
For me, personally, something like a weighted blanket would not have helped with me being scared, but yeah might help with the ADHD and restlessness part like the others stated. Dunno.
A quick Google search leads me to find out that this is incredibly common even in kids at the age I was and the age your son is. So at least what is happening isn't overly concerning as something abnormal if that at all helps.
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I can sympathize, I was a nightmare for my parents growing up not being able to sleep. Though I usually was caught reading or playing video games instead. ADHD can be very hard to deal with and I wish you the best of luck
Though I usually was caught reading or playing video games instead
same, except the incandescent bulb night lamp would make me get out of the sheets in no time, exposing the light to the corridor
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I have experience with this. There is nothing damaging about co-sleeping occasionally. The risk is either of you becoming dependent.
A 27 year old single mother, if I had to guess, doesn't plan on staying single forever. At some point a significant other, once properly introduced, will be staying the night and your son should not be a part of that.
The other issue I see here is "it's kind of nice not having to sleep alone every night." This does not strike me as healthy, especially when he stops co-sleeping.
Ultimately, you are the adult, and you are the caretaker. I would highly recommend getting your son a regular therapist to guide you through this.
What's wrong with that statement? I feel like I prefer not sleeping alone as well but I don't have a problem when I do it.
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I’m a 27 year old single mother and I have a 12 year old son. Recently he’s been knocking on my door in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep and he asks to sleep with me. I’ve been letting him since neither of us really have a problem with it and it’s kind of nice not having to sleep alone every night. However, I’ve heard and seen some things online that seem controversial about co-sleeping with a child past a certain age. I definitely don’t want to negatively affect his development, so I guess what are your thoughts?
If it's not causing any issues, don't worry about it. If it seems to be causing a dependency or increased anxiety around sleeping alone, then maybe it's not a good idea. There doesn't seem to be any consensus among psychologists. Some like it, some hate it. So the best you're going to be able to do is keep track of how it affects you both and change things up if it becomes a problem.
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I’m a 27 year old single mother and I have a 12 year old son. Recently he’s been knocking on my door in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep and he asks to sleep with me. I’ve been letting him since neither of us really have a problem with it and it’s kind of nice not having to sleep alone every night. However, I’ve heard and seen some things online that seem controversial about co-sleeping with a child past a certain age. I definitely don’t want to negatively affect his development, so I guess what are your thoughts?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'll just put this out there: Would it feel less weird to you if it was your daughter?
Anecdotally, I had a friend who crawled up to cosleep with her single mom even as a teenager and student sometimes. Especially when she wasn't doing well. Being a family of 2 brings you very close together, and also unfortunately, makes you the only super close person in their lives. She liked to cuddle up with friends too occasionally. It never seemed off or weird.
She might be hypersensitive (although this is not a recognized diagnosis), but otherwise, she is developmentally (and sexually) absolutely standard. She's 33 now and does very well in life and with her boyfriend.
What I mean by that is that it might seem more unconventional to cosleep with someone of the opposite sex who is starting puberty. Being a girl, having a girl friend, and this girl friend liking to sleep with me, another friend, or her mom as company was never weird. All other friends also thought that's fine. I think that's that girl privilege where we are more comfortable with closeness. So, if you felt weird if it was your daughter too, it might just not be for you (although you mentioned you slept better). If it's about the gender (some subconscious bias), it's still your child. Just your child.
Last but not least, there are more than enough people around the world who share a room or even a bed with family members until a bigger age. A friend of mine coslept with 8 silblings since there was just no room. Especially with a voluntary cosleeping situation, I would rather try to focus on the benefits it gives you two - closeness, connection, a feeling of safety, and knowing you're there for each other. Also through changes in life.
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Holy shit I feel like I had a similar kind of issue and I've never heard anyone talk about it before. Childhood tinnitus and sleeping issues. Literally never had anyone else write anything remotely similar to my experience.
I slept on the floor of my sibling's room instead of my parents. I have always suspected that I had a form of tinnitus even as a young child. I would get paranoid that the sounds of the tinnitus were some other entity in the room and get scared. You know how like you can sometimes "hear" when someone behind you even though they don't make a sort of obvious sound? That's how mine has always been for me. For me, it wasn't that I needed noise to drown it out. It was that having someone else in the room made me feel safe enough to sleep.
My tinnitus if that's what it really is has always constantly and incessantly warbled in intensity and directionality, which propogates the feeling of something suddenly being there. It's not the classical "eee" noise that people think of when they think tinnitus.
I remember as a child thinking when people would talk about the "sounds of silence" that they just meant this noise lol.
I've never been diagnosed with tinnitus, but I've been living with it for decades. I mostly have a low-level, staticky whine, but sometimes I'll have attacks that are high-pitched, loud, and painful. I will also rarely have bouts where my hearing is muffled and definitely feels like someone is behind you blocking ambient sounds. The in front of you part is probably blocked out by our eyes showing nothing there.
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I’m a 27 year old single mother and I have a 12 year old son. Recently he’s been knocking on my door in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep and he asks to sleep with me. I’ve been letting him since neither of us really have a problem with it and it’s kind of nice not having to sleep alone every night. However, I’ve heard and seen some things online that seem controversial about co-sleeping with a child past a certain age. I definitely don’t want to negatively affect his development, so I guess what are your thoughts?
seems unusual, at 13 i already hated sleeping with a family member in different beds, because he was constantly hovering over as a "helicopter parent" who he thought took it upon himself.
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I’m a 27 year old single mother and I have a 12 year old son. Recently he’s been knocking on my door in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep and he asks to sleep with me. I’ve been letting him since neither of us really have a problem with it and it’s kind of nice not having to sleep alone every night. However, I’ve heard and seen some things online that seem controversial about co-sleeping with a child past a certain age. I definitely don’t want to negatively affect his development, so I guess what are your thoughts?
How cares what people say, just do what feels right.
Don’t underestimate the need for physical touch. Most people are starved of physical touch, rather than having too much of it, especially males.
Male teenagers will stop sleeping with parents once they start masturbating, so your problem is going to be short-lived.
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How cares what people say, just do what feels right.
Don’t underestimate the need for physical touch. Most people are starved of physical touch, rather than having too much of it, especially males.
Male teenagers will stop sleeping with parents once they start masturbating, so your problem is going to be short-lived.
Male teenagers will stop sleeping with parents once they start masturbating, so your problem is going to be short-lived.
...or you're going to have a completely different more terrifying problem
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Male teenagers will stop sleeping with parents once they start masturbating, so your problem is going to be short-lived.
...or you're going to have a completely different more terrifying problem
Lol. This is not porn
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Lol. This is not porn
Yeah, she said son, not stepson
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Lol. This is not porn
Wanted to point out Oedipus and Electra complexes. Began reading. Should not be reading.
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Yeah, she said son, not stepson
Lol, yes. Point to be noted
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Lol. This is not porn
It's got a name for a reason, Oedipus complex
