co-sleeping without the proper option of seperate bed - when is dc too old??

[zebramummy]

i love cosleeping with ds who is coming up to 4. i always told myself that i would stop doing this before he starts school - he will start in january but in many other areas he would be starting in september.

he has his own bedroom since birth which was thoughtfully furnished & originally had a cot in it but he obviously outgrew this in time & it was not replaced by a childs bed as he was already a fully-fledged co-sleeper by then. even though he has his clothes and some toys/activities in there i dont think he retains any real emotional attachment to the room - instead he sees the main bedroom as 'his sleeping/resting/reading/lounging about place' for obvious reasons. dh now sleeps in ds' room and both ds and i feel that room is now dh's room. btw dh and i have an otherwise good relationship and this issue is far from being a bone of contention.

i feel reluctant to force this upon ds as he is otherwise an independent, mature child. however, it feels fantastic to be there when he reaches out for my arm while asleep and drifts back into deep sleep rather than playing out that other scenario which would result if i were in a different bed. however, i worry that he would be bullied by his peers if he let slip that he was still cosleeping as even though i know that it is the norm in many cultures it is basically not so in this culture esp at that stage.

... and dh said HE would like ...? Or did you not ask him?

I don't see how it works without DH being the one to suffer.
We go to bed quite late, we have the light on and we chat,( often the only chance in the day!) and read. I would think that a sex life becomes very restricted. I wouldn't want to be whispering and undressing in the dark so as not to wake the DC. I am happy that they can sleep in their own room without being disturbed.
If someone was ill we might have played 'musical beds' with different combinations, but not as a general thing.
It is treating a 4 or 5 yr old as if they are still a baby and an extension of you, rather than their own little person IMO.
We are on the point of having an 'empty nest' and it will be DH and me-you need to keep the relationship alive. I think that you have to be 100% certain that DH thinks along the same lines and isn't just going along with you.
When I was a widow with a baby it would have been very easy, and nice, to have had him in my bed for 5/6 yrs but it would have been about my needs, and not his so I didn't do it.
I think that everyone likes their own space-friends coming around to play must think it odd that he has a bedroom with a cot!

OMG. I am so enraged by the assertions that some posters seem to know people's husbands better than the wives do themselves!

Just because your family works a certain way, doesn't mean everyone's has to. Personally I would be very sad if DH wasn't included in the bedsharing, but if that was what worked for our family and everyone was happy, then that's what we'd do.

Pisces - it is not treating a a 4 or 5yo as if they are still a baby, it is letting them detach from you in their own time.

I can't believe how angry I feel about this!

Our 6yo has only just left our bed out of her choice. Oh, and DH and I are very, very happily married, and have a very strong partnership. FFS, 5 years is not actually a very long time in terms of an entire lifetime.

Grr, grr, grr!

OP - do what works best for you and your whole family and ignore what anyone else says.

Agree with flamingobingo. It really is a case of different strokes for different folks. I do think that dads need to be happy with the arrangement though, or at the very least accept it's the best option all-round for now. It is (usually) temporary.

That said, it occurred to me while revisiting this thread that two couples I know - who I would consider to have two of the healthiest relationships - sleep in separate beds/rooms. They're both middle-aged now. One couple has a severely autistic grown-up daughter who lives with them, with her own body clock, and it suits them to sleep apart in separate rooms, at different times. They are very loving and seem to adore each other. The other couple have a double bed each in their mahoosive bedroom. She's a lark and he's a nightowl. They sleep better with this arrangement. And they seem very happy. So, IME at least, a couple's sleeping arrangement, however unconventional, is no big deal so long as both parties are happy with it.