To just give up with bedtime for the 6yo?

[AnachronisticCorpse]

He’s always been terrible at sleeping in his own bed. We’ve happily coslept until about a year ago when he really got too big for it to be comfortable.

Now we have a sort of uneasy truce whereby one of us spends up to an hour reading and settling and sitting outside his room until he falls asleep. He always wakes up in our bed, which is fine.

DD is 13 and recently got a double bed. So now it’s 50/50 whether he wanders into ours or hers (she doesn’t mind at all). At the weekends she’s started having him in with her from the get go, they watch films (later bedtime at the weekend) and fall asleep with no drama. We’d said this is just for non school days because of some ingrained notion of it being better for them to sleep in their own beds, with a routine etc.

So I’ve sort of given up this evening. I’m tired and a bit blah and DH was working. dd asked if ds could sleep in her bed, I said that was fine, they trotted off upstairs at 8pm and that was that. DH finished work, we spent some time together, watched some tv and have now come to bed.

I honestly think this might be the way forward. Would we be shooting ourselves in the foot? I mean, he’ll learn to sleep in his own bed eventually, right?

DH’s only grumble is that when he’s in with DD he doesn’t end up in our bed at all and DH misses him .

WWBU to just say fuckit and let him share with DD, all the time she’s happy with it? It’s such a palaver otherwise, and is it really worth it?

Your dd sounds so lovely I slept with my nan every night until I was 8

My kids always slept with their bedroom doors open, their rooms were next to each other and you could hear them chatting. Maybe him having a bed in sisters room and then moving into his own room with doors open might help?

If it's any consolation by the time they were 15 or 16 they could sleep for England and then I started worrying about how they would be able to go to uni or get a job or live alone because they would never get up in the morning. They managed fine. Now I worry about...... you get the picture, the worry never ends. Get through it the best you can.

my 6 yo is perfectly capable of sleeping in her own bed. She just prefers to jump in with me at some point most nights.

Long may it last I say.

My friend has four kids and when I had mine and struggled with all sorts of sleep problems, I went to her for advice. She said "maximise sleep and minimise suffering for all", which I thought was great. Whatever works for you and helps everyone get some sleep. When your daughter wants her privacy you'll just have to think of another solution, and who knows - maybe your boy is then ready to sleep by himself?

weve had similar issues with ds, who is 6 now. dd is fine at sleeping on her own and will even go off to bed on her own at times (2) weve moved dd's bed into ds's room so they both sleep in same room this has worked to an extent.

although 6 and 2 is diff to 6 and 13, its a start i guess.

Ha ha, if my 6-y-o is in bed at 8 he is up again by 3am and ready to have a nap by school time, whereas if in bed by 9 he (usually) sleeps soundly til 8. Just goes to show they really are all individuals. We still cosleep too. I think cosleeping with his sister sounds like a great halfway house towards his own bed, for as long as she's happy with it. In any case, kids have coslept with parents and siblings since before we evlolved into humans, and right up to today- I think our worries about independence etc. need to be put in that context!