Why do we make children sleep in their own room when it’s clear they don’t want to?

[merrynelly]

Many people I know have struggled with or are struggling with getting their children to sleep in their own room and to stay there for the whole night. Often the child comes to the parents room in the middle of the night and if permitted will sleep in their parents bed for the remainder of the night. I would think that many children seem to feel safer and more secure sleeping in the same room as their parents if not the same bed. So why do we force them to go against what seems to be so natural for them?

I am currently lying in bed next to my daughter who has ASD.
To be honest having her in our bed every night, listening to her anxieties and conforming to her rules around everything is really annoying. She is nearly 7 and I'm sick of it.
DD2 is 3 and while she has on occasion tried to sleep with us I would never ever allow it unless she was poorly.
Cannot understand why you would want to willingly sleep with your child past baby stage.

At this rate m DD1 will be still be like this in our bed at 15.

My main reason for sending DC back to their beds is that I value my sleep! Cuddles at an acceptable time in the am are lovely but I don't enjoy being punched in the face as they snore their heads off whilst starfishing horizontally and pushing me out of my own bed!

If they are Ill or are having a particularly dreadful night we get the trundle out and sleep with them in their rooms.

Instinct isn’t always right, that’s why.

[quote terfinginthevoid]@everderose, I had similar experiences as a child. I had very vivid nightmares (many of them Doctor Who related) and would often wake in the night absolutely terrified, but had been trained to stay in my own bed. With hindsight, my parents would have been horrified if they had known just how frightened I was, nearly every night.
I would never want my children to feel that fear, and think they couldn’t come to me for comfort.
I don’t know whether it was because of the co-sleeping, but as far as I’m aware neither of them ever had a nightmare.[/quote]
But...your parents didn't know about YOUR nightmares. Maybe your children have them and you don't know? I don't mean to pick on you, and it sounds like you are happy for your children to ask for comfort in the night, but I see this logic a lot: my parents didn't know I was scared but I definitely know my children aren't. I had terrible insomnia and it used to take me hours of misery to get to sleep - and my parents never knew. Or perhaps I did tell them and they didn't care, so I stopped telling them? I'm not sure.

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"Sleep in your own bed" and "Don't expect any parenting in the night" aren't necessarily the same thing. We require our 3yo (eldest, only one in a bed) to stay in bed at night. I'd worry about him hurting himself if he got out by himself in the middle of the night. But we expect him to sit up in bed and call for us if he needs us instead, which he has been doing during a recent illness, and we'll go to him. We get the peace of mind of knowing where he is, he can still "access" us during the night.

At some point we'll switch and require him to get out of bed and come and find us, but right now I don't trust his judgement on that. I wouldn't feel confident that he would be sensible about turning his light on, not falling down the stairs, looking for us downstairs vs in our bed depending on what time it is... So the rule is stay in bed until the morning (he has a colour change clock), not lie in bed silent and alone quaking with fear.