Co-sleeping part time?

[Anonymous]

I have a three year old and work out of the home. He sleeps through the night in his own bed but getting him to bed is a challenge with tears and yelling for me frequent. I grew up co-sleeping with my parents but my mom’s work wasn’t as intense as mine. Sometimes I let DS sleep in bed with me, but I don’t necessarily want him in bed with me every night. I think there is a benefit to co-sleeping, particularly because he is in daycare 10 hours a day, but want him to be able to sleep in bedroom as well. I was thinking about creating a system where he can sleep in my bed on certain nights of the week, but not on others. For example he can sleep In my bedroom on Mon, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I thought about having it be on just weekends, but then that might give him a negative association with school days.

Would this part time co-sleeping system be too unstructured for his age? Has anyone else tried this or a similar sort of schedule?

[Anonymous]

I don’t have a problem with cosleeping if it works for everyone involved. The only issue I see here is that you don’t sound fully on board. I would advise you to be careful not to set up a schedule that makes you want to cancel on him, and to never withhold it as punishment or dole it out as a reward.

[Anonymous]

Is he old enough to understand this?

Someone told me once with young kids: "Do as you mean to continue" and I definitely took that to heart.

3 might be old enough, especially if you did something visual like put a green circle on your door the days he can sleep with you or something.

[Anonymous]

I have no problem with cosleeping but that sounds confusing to your kid. If he finds it comforting three days a week, he'd find it so the other days, too.

I'd rather have him start the night in my bed (or his own bed, or whatever) and then either put him back in his bed or let him come into my bed in the middle of the night.

[Anonymous]

I would do a Friday night slumber party with mom only. If he stays in bed all week, then Friday he can sleep with you. Make it a movie night as well.

[Anonymous]

10 hours a day in daycare? I would allow him to sleep with me.

[Anonymous]

If you're going to do part-time, I think it would make more sense to him to have it be weekends/weekdays. Weekends are obviously different and have a different rhythm to them, so it will make sense to him that those are the days he can cosleep with you. You could set things up as "it's a school day, so you need to get a good night's sleep in your own room tonight" for weekdays. This is pretty typical at older ages -- i.e., I let my 2nd grader stay up later and watch a move on Friday nights, for example.

I personally did cosleeping when my kids were little but stopped by age 2. I'm a little less sure how it would work at the older ages. Seems like this is about the time they might start moving toward their own room.

Is there a way to work on a bedtime routine and comforting situation instead? Maybe you could lay with him while he falls asleep or something but not cosleep all night, if that's an issue for you?

[Anonymous]

I would work on getting him to bed without tears and drama. Adding co-sleeping to the mix basically adds a crutch you apparently don't need. Work on a cozy before bed routine instead.

[Anonymous]

Where is the kid’s other parent on this?

[Anonymous]

OP here, thank you all for the good ideas above. Re question above, ideally I think DH would like no co-sleeping at all, (even when DC is sick at night and vomiting). DH doesn’t even want me to lay down with DC to go to sleep or to stay in room with him to sleep. When I do that DH comes bursting in the room and angrily saying “what are you doing in there?!”

DH thinks I should just ignore his crying and leave him in room alone with door closed and light off. We have very different approaches and that can be upsetting sometimes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:10 hours a day in daycare? I would allow him to sleep with me.

Lol, this poster must not work full time or have a commute.

[Anonymous]

What worked for us was buying a big bed for kid, I would stay in bed next to him at bedtime and would retrieve to my own bed once he was asleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you all for the good ideas above. Re question above, ideally I think DH would like no co-sleeping at all, (even when DC is sick at night and vomiting). DH doesn’t even want me to lay down with DC to go to sleep or to stay in room with him to sleep. When I do that DH comes bursting in the room and angrily saying “what are you doing in there?!”

DH thinks I should just ignore his crying and leave him in room alone with door closed and light off. We have very different approaches and that can be upsetting sometimes.

What’s with all the crappy DHs on the threads in this forum? Or do all the mistreated wives just come out from the woodwork around the holidays?

I co-sleep with my 3yo but I always have. I would not start it now if I weren’t already doing it. The freedom of not co-sleeping is amazing.

You probably don’t want to hear it, but you need to cut down on hours in daycare. 50 hours a week is just not healthy. You and DH should stagger hours and get it down to 35-40 at least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:10 hours a day in daycare? I would allow him to sleep with me.

Lol, this poster must not work full time or have a commute.

NP here - DH and I work FT and both of us commute 30-45 minutes each way. We stagger hours and each take a WFH day to save commute time. We have never needed more than 30 hours of childcare per week. We don’t make $$$$ but we don’t care, and if we didn’t have this setup one of us would quit. Time with DCs is more important than anything.

[Anonymous]

Our part-time cosleeping looks like a kiddo falling asleep in their own bed (with a parent there), then if they wake up in the night, they can crawl in with us if they want to.