When there’s four in the bed and no room to ‘roll over’, it’s time to make changes – but how do you approach the issue when it’s not your child?
Choosing to live with someone always comes with a few compromises and negotiations.
That list gets substantially longer when one, or both of you have children from previous relationships.
The issue of co-sleeping is a tricky one, from babyhood right up until adolescence – especially when the two adults sharing the bed don’t share the same opinion on who gets to squeeze in between them.
Not all co-sleeping situations are so dreamy. Source: iStock
Too close for comfort
A woman has written to advice website, Slate, about not feeling comfortable to sleep in her own bed with her fiancé when his two children stay over.
“They have their own room, but come bedtime, they will plead and cajole and even cry to try to sleep with us,” she writes of the 11 and six-year-old girls.
“I usually end up migrating into the living room to finish up work or watch TV. Then I grab a blanket and sleep on the couch so I don’t wake anyone up (not that there is room for me in the bed).”
Getting the kids excited about their own room can help. Read how to choose the right bed for growing kids and how to transition your little one to a big bed without losing sleep.
The woman is torn: after months of this pattern, she wants her bed back (her back is suffering for it) but doesn’t want to make the wrong move as a stepmother by putting a stop to it (when their dad insists it’s only “temporary”) or letting it continue and wonder if she’s negatively impacting the girls’ development.
Crashing on the couch isn’t a permanent solution. Source: iStock
How to get everyone’s needs met
There’s no hard and fast answer to this dilemma, according to Slate’s advice columnist, Daniel Mallory Ortberg.
For changes to happen, there needs to be a lot of careful discussion at the right times. First of all, the first conversation – that you “want to be able to sleep in our bed together” – should occur without the children present.
At the same time, he advised coming together to figure out ways of making the girls feeling supported and welcome in the home in ways that work for everyone.
The step-mum approach could go like this, he says: “I know it’s hard in the moment to say no, especially when you don’t get to see them every day, but it’s not actually helping them, and it’s physically painful for me. How can we plan a different reaction to this scene so we can move on?”
Ortberg also suggests a visit to a couples’ counselor who specialises in blended families, because if the kids are visiting often, taking a “hands off” approach is not going to work.
Creating healthy sleeping patterns takes time. Source: iStock
To co-sleep or not?
In his book, Wild Nights: How taming sleep created our restless world, author, Benjamin Reiss argues that by separating family members at night, we have created a society lacks kindness, compassion and that often struggles to sleep at all.
“This system of sleeping — adults in one room, each child walled off in another — was common practice exactly nowhere before the late 19th century, when it took hold in Europe and North America,” Reiss wrote for the LA Times.
“In 1928, the behavioral psychologist John Watson argued that children should occupy their own rooms as early as possible for fear that too much coddling would stunt a child’s development.”
At the same time, he can see valid reasons for children to have their own bedroom.
“It’s more practical for adults to pursue nighttime leisure in an area where children aren’t sleeping; it’s easier to set everyone on a proper schedule for work and school when they can all retire to different spaces at different times; and parental intimacy may increase without little ones around,” he wrote.
“Doctors advise parents not to share soft mattresses with infants — in case they roll over and suffocate the child — especially if the adults have been drinking before bed.”