Your son or daughter will soon go to first grade, but still continue to sleep in their parent’s bed? “Don’t delay the decision to separate,” urges child psychotherapist Madeleine Rosenblum. “The ability to sleep independently is an important condition for the successful development of the child.”
To part with your mother for the whole night means to be alone with your fantasies and experiences, fears and problems … Therefore, learning to sleep alone is sometimes a difficult task.
Some adults insist that their child is excitable and too fragile, and every timid attempt to teach him to sleep separately ends in children’s tears, quarrels between parents and a “broken” night for the whole family. That is why children in such families continue to sleep with their parents (or with one of them) until they are five or seven years old.
It is important to understand that by agreeing to a compromise, we thereby deprive the child of the opportunity to grow up: independently look for a way out of a difficult situation, overcome fears, learn to create a cozy and comfortable space for ourselves.
Explain the situation to your son or daughter, but in a way that makes him/her feel that sleeping alone is a privilege, not a punishment.
On the other hand, staying in his mother’s bed, the preschooler learns to control … the behavior of parents: when mom and dad should lie next to him; how and where they should, in his opinion, sleep.
This situation is especially common in families where mothers raise a child without a husband, or where tensions develop between spouses. In this case, parents unconsciously project their anxieties and their own insecurity onto the child: his presence next to him satisfies their urgent need — to feel the warmth and closeness of a loved one.
When deciding to separate, act confidently and gradually. Agree with your partner that, for example, in a week you will transfer the child to a separate bed.
Tell your son or daughter about this, but in a way that he (a) feels (a): sleeping alone is a privilege, not a punishment (“You have already learned how to eat on your own, play football. Now you can fall asleep in your bed”) .
Make a calendar on which you will together count the days remaining until a significant date. Ask your child what soft toy he wants to take to bed with him.
Be sure to establish a pleasant bedtime ritual: reading a fairy tale, gentle hugs, good night wishes. Be kind, firm and consistent in your actions. And good dreams to you!
An excerpt from Madeleine Rosenblum’s book «Me, You, Our Child — Growing Up Together» (CheRo, KDU, 2007).