How old is too old to co-sleep??

[Crazydoglady04]

My partners little girl is 6. She started staying with us every weekend when she was 3 and has had her own bedroom since she was 4 and has slept in her own bed at our house since then. Around the time of doing up her bedroom we spoke to her mum who said she still slept in bed with her, but she was going to decorate a bedroom for her and get her in her own bed before she started school in September.
Fast forward over 2 years and she still co-sleeps with her mum/nana/grandad at home and still does not have her own bedroom.
Everytime they go on holiday and we don't see her for a week we go back to square one of getting up repeatedly for hours in the middle of the night because she refuses to stay in her own bed.
So my question is, what age is too old to co-sleep? We feel like 6 is a bit too old now, and she should be able to self sooth and fall asleep on her own which she cannot do. Her mum says she doesn't want to upset her daughter and she'll start sleeping in her own bed when she's ready.
The most important thing to us is that she has consistency but we seem to be on very different pages with her mother.

So you massively increased his risk of SIDS. If I wanted to be nasty, I could say that what you did was much lazier.

Fine, it doesn’t work for you. Great. Let’s not sneer at all those who are struggling and this is the only set up that works.

My 9yo still co sleeps. She has her own room and will sleep in it & enjoys spending them there she just prefers sleeping with us. I miss her when she's not there so that probably doesn't help!

Dd sleeps with us at 9. She did sleep on her own until we went a family holiday when she was 2. She has two beds of her own. A single in our room and the top bunk in her brothers room. She just doesn't want to be on her own. I thought she would grow out of it but it seems not

@JRM17

Wow. I think it’s amazing you have one child who’s 6 and seem to know it all? How enlightening.

@DangerousAlchemy

One can only be a great parent if one spends every minute of the day with ones kids plus nighttime too apparently

one one one

My DH does the majority of the co-sleeping with DD2 currently because I’m pregnant and need a pregnancy pillow to alleviate the pressure on my hips. He loves cuddling our DDs because he’s their dad. Does he always appreciate DD2 wiggling next to him whilst he’s trying to sleep? Of course not but he knows it’s what she needs to have the comfort of mummy or daddy sometimes and he prioritises her.

When DDs were both babies and co-slept with us all night, we took it in turns. No one was relegated to a sofa or child’s bed.

The only people who look after our DDs overnight when they’re little enough to co-sleep more than just for bad dreams are my parents or PIL. My parents would cuddle them both quite happily and I know PIL would too.

Absolutely fuck all to do with the stepmum.

I think it's hard for a 6 year old when there is no consistency across households, but also 6 is still quite little and fine to be co-sleeping if that's her choice. Our kids initially were in a cot in our room, but that stopped working for us around the age of 1 and they got their own room and subsequently they only co-slept when they were sick. However my daughters anxiety got worse around when COVID hit, maybe related to the pandemic or just coincidental, and aged 11 jumps in to bed with me occasionally (roughly once a month), always related to her spiralling anxiety prohibiting sleep. Usually I go in a few times to her in her own room to offer comfort and reassurance, then if she's still not sleeping and it's 10:30/11pm, my solution is she gets in to bed with me. It stops me having to get out of bed and she reliably falls asleep and at some rest for school the next day. We don't all sleep together though, she just takes Dads spot and he sleeps in her bed. The 9 year old almost never co-sleeps.

I guess I'm the odd one out as I never co-slept with my DD. She did sleep in my room in a separate bed til she was about 5/6 months old then I put her in her own room and she had no issues settling and going to sleep.

My ex would encourage his 8/9 year old to co-sleep with us whenever she was staying with him. It was awkward and uncomfortable. I usually would either sleep on the sofa or would go home and sleep in my own bed.

I think it's incredibly personal to the child and parent but, essentially, it's when either party is no longer comfortable with it. 6 is still a young child so if mum and child are happy with it, there's no issue I can see.

Personally, I'd say when the kid hits puberty they definitely should be in their own room most the time, but that's just me.

I don't know what age is too old but it's not 6 xx

Think people are missing the point - surely 6yo is too old to be sleeping in a bed with an adult who is not related to them - ie should OP be expected to share her bed with someone else’s child until their mother decides to ease DSD into solo sleeping? And should she and DH have to have continually disturbed nights (and, indeed that child too) because the child is distressed at sleeping alone? As a parent, I’d certainly not want my child sleeping in a step-parent’s bed and would work with exH to ensure co sleeping only happened in my home. But then, I was molested at 8yo, so perhaps I’m unusual…

The OP isn't co-sleeping with the child though, she just wants to stop the mum doing so.

Child has her own bed at dad's house.

My 8 year old is still waking up and coming in to me at some.point during the night. She shares a room.with her little sister who would sleep through but for this so sometimes I end up with both crammed in! Getting cross about it doesn't work. I haven't tried a slow phase out yet as too tired!

All these people with older kids in their beds with the other parent turfed to child’s bed or sofa is strange to me. Unless unwell,
i also think it’s a bit off with stepparents and kids that are not theirs sharing beds.
although I was molested for most of my childhood so maybe have a skewed ideas

My ds just started sleeping alone at 12. He has sn's but honestly I didn't mind. I think there's a feeling of safety he felt sleeping next to me.

That said I'm also a single mom and apparently we are all sad fries who need our kids to snuggle us.

It’s funny when people dream up all sorts of horrors about what must happen when people do things differently to them.

I have three children and usually one ends up in my bed each night. We have had nights out and weekends away, they have had babysitters and grandparents and all have slept fine. Being welcome in my bed hasn’t stopped that at all. As the OP has shown, children can cope with different setups with different people.

Thank you for all your responses, cosleeping is completely new to me so I've learnt alot about the norms in different households and feel alot less in the dark!

There are a few dynamics at play here. First, agree that whilst consistency is ideal it’s not realistic with two households and there are far more important things you will want to be on the same page about than where she sleeps. As others have said, mum’s is the primary residence and so long as she is not parenting in a dangerous manner then she effectively
takes the lead.

As you aren’t a parent you may have some unreasonable expectations of parenting (as we all do before we become full time parents) in that it’s also totally normal to ‘start from scratch’ with your kids over and over when working toward something you want them to do, especially if they would rather do something else. That would happen with your own child too chances are.

I have found that being a step-parent the main difference for me is the physical boundary, especially where I didn’t care for DSS from being a baby or change nappies etc. So when he started staying overnight with us when turning 5 I definitely wouldn’t have coslept with him. He would come to us for a nightmare etc and have a cuddle in bed and then one of us would take him back to his room and stay until he slept. However, if he hadn’t been able to sleep independently he would have slept with his dad in our room and me in his.

I cosleep quite a bit with DD who is 2, most nights at the minute she comes in but it is usually around 5/6am. With my DSS, I would cosleep with him now if he really needed me to, but I know with him it would become an expectation, whereas with DD2 she has always gone through phases of cosleeping and then wanting to go back into her own room and always falls asleep in her own room (though I lie next to her until she is asleep). The main difficulty with DSS is that he is a noisy and fidgety sleeper and I am a light sleeper so wouldn’t get any sleep, and I know he is a heavy sleeper so once asleep will always sleep through in his own room without waking. So he has a nightlight and I rub his head to help him sleep if he needs it. The fact we have never coslept also plays a role as it’s probably the only boundary in our relationship that is different from with my biological child, so it would feel a bit odd to suddenly do it now that he’s older, but again, if he wasn’t going to sleep otherwise I’d certainly consider it.

DD2 is nowhere near as disruptive in her sleep and the quality of sleep for all parties is really important in terms of sustainability and impacting your relationships overall.

I think so long as your DSD is happy that she can come to you when she needs something, day or night, it’s totally fine that she sleeps independently at yours and not at her mums. Also totally normally for them to ask you to get them a drink etc in the nighttime, I would expect this until they are secondary age at least, not least because I’d otherwise panic at being woken to a noise in the house that wasn’t a child coming in!

I did that.

And I’ve never slept alone since I turned 12 and moved into my own bedroom. I’ve always got at least one live specimen in my bed at all times (dog, man, cat). I don’t think I could sleep alone

I co-slept as a child. My parents didn't want me to but I was so terrified of being alone and in the dark. Even the night light didn't work because it was dark beyond it and outside the door and the shadows it cast turned into grotesque faces or monsters. I remember firmly believing there was a crocodile under my bed and a witch hovering on a broomstick looking through my bedroom window at me.

Once I had summoned the courage to emerge from under the duvet I would sprint to my parents room convinced that I was being pursued or about to be ambushed on the way.

If my parent's door was locked (to keep me out) I would cry and beg to be let in. One night when I was about 8/9 they didn't open the door and I was too scared to go back to my room in the dark so I slept upright with my back to the door till I was found shivering in the morning.

One of my kids co-slept, one didn't. I think it's to do with the level of security and whether they fear the dark like I did. My co-sleeper stopped on their own near puberty. We did try putting them back but they woke and followed every time we tried to tiptoe out of the room. It's hard to function on a decade of broken sleep. We caved for an easy life and because I could empathise with the terror I saw at being alone.

But it’s not her own child, that’s the point and she rightly wants advice on her situation

That doesn’t seem to be a response to the OP, it’s responding to a different poster with a 6yo

You’ll probably get told to stay in your lane, OP, but I’d feel the same as you. I think the mum, by not giving her the option of her own room, is dropping the ball. And I wonder who it’s really for.