Do you co sleep? Did you while you were married? Would you still if you were to get married again? I personally don’t have a problem with co sleeping, maybe it’s because I only had one child but I never saw it as a problem.
Hailey slept with her Dad and I until she was about nine, we tried, many times to get her to sleep in her own bed, and she would for a night or two, but she always wound up right back in bed with us. We started co sleeping when she was born, I know everyone says not to sleep with and infant but we did, and it just continued. All of our friends and family told us we were making a mistake, but I didn’t see it that way. I thought that like everything else, Hailey would sleep alone in her own time. After all, what fifteen year old still sleeps with her parents?
We finally got Hailey to sleep in her own bed and then we got divorced. The first night in our new apartment Hailey slept with me and it became a pattern once again. I was fine with it, I liked having her near, I knew the apartment was strange to her, and there were lots of noises that she wasn’t use to from living in a house all her life. I figured if it made her feel safer there wasn’t any harm in it, I certainly didn’t want her to be in her room alone and frightened. This lasted for about a year until she was ready to sleep alone.
I’m sure if I would have remarried during that time it would have been awkward at best and traumatizing to Hailey at worst. I think as a single parent, if we think we might get remarried, we should encourage our children to sleep alone. If we don’t then they will think they can’t sleep with you because of your new spouse and a little seed of resentment against this new person will be planted.
When I was growing up my parents room was off limits, it was the one space in the house that wasn’t over run by kids, it was their sanctuary. As an adult I see the attraction of that, I would love to have a space all my own, but I love that Hailey will still come into my room at night before I go to sleep to talk. Sometimes she just snuggles in next to me. Those are the most wonderful minutes of the day. Just the two of us, in the quiet, talking about our day, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I am still a proponent of co sleeping, I really can’t imagine it any other way.