if you're apprehensive that she's not ready, why are you making the change? has she told you she wants to do this?

When she's ready to start sleeping by herself she will make the change on her own, and there will be no difficulty or struggle involved. This may happen when she's 3, or it may happen when she's 16. She'll let you know.

I wish 16. LOL I know sad holding onto my last child this way.
My son is four and sleeps with us. My girls both slept with me, but left on their own, first one by 4ish and the second by 3, but both came in and out their entire lives.
In NY, most families stayed sleeping together or in the same room out of no choice. None of us could afford more than one, maybe two bedrooms apartments.

I am so used to being around families that were like that, when I moved to NC and saw these homes that were 2000 sf and up and kids having their own wings, I thought wow, all that money means more isolation, but most families see it as being healthy and independent.

For centuries the only people who had kids sleeping in other rooms were the wealthy, and those could afford nurses who stayed in the rooms with the smaller children or in an off room next to them. It is just recently that kids were put on their own. This is because of the invention of electricity. No longer are we needed to keep our children warm or safe on a physical level. We have locks and heaters.

If you are ready for your child to leave your bed, then do it gently. Go bed shopping, talk about it, let her pick out her bed and to start maybe put it in your room that way she can climb out of your bed into her new bed to try it out. It wont be long before she will want it put in her own room, but this way you are not pushing her too fast into something she isn't ready for.

Over 27 years as a parents and I have never seen an angrier child than one who is forced out of the family bed before they were ready and one who was forced out to make room for a new baby, even angrier. I see this a lot again on a local level. Angry kids and rightfully so. They still wanted the bed, the breast etc. and all of the sudden they are cast out to make room for a new child or just cast out because mama and dad changed their minds.

When you become impatient, which is a natural feeling, remind yourself how you would feel if your spouse or partner turned to you and send get out of my bedroom because they wanted to sleep with someone or something else, anything but you.

My family is personally letting our son decide. My husband wasn't sure what to think about it when we started. This is his first child. Now he would have it no other way and is shocked when other families say oh our baby is in its own room. Our bed is sacred. It is where we have peace, sleep and comfort. It is open to all members of my family and to this day when my 22 year old comes to visit, she still will jump into bed with her brother and I. (And her dog, and our two huge dogs)

Peace and take things slowly, it is so worth it!

Jo

Hi MayClaires01
Did you pick 3yrs as time to not bedshare at some point and now you are thinking more about it?
What kind of independence do you think bed sharing will help or hold her back?

Maybe she will be more independence because she has the security of the same kind of consistent nighttime parenting? Maybe an abrupt 'kick out of bed' will encourage doubt about her status in the family and weaken her journey towards independence?

Our 5 yr old sleeps about half the night with us. Both of us are getting to the point where we don't want to be poked and kicked (He is a horrible bed companion!) I know we could get him more used to staying in bed if my husband or I took him back to his bed and laid with him there until he fell asleep, then returned to our bed. Doing that all the time, every night would probably get that to happen. Neither of us have the energy to do that right now so it will wait. I certainly don’t want to take the boy back and leave him alone to fall asleep (he does not have that skill as we have not forced him to learn it). That would only make nights unbearable….maybe only for a few weeks but do I want that to be my child’s nighttime experience?

If you decide you are ready for your daughter to leave the nestbed- gradual is best. Maybe a futon on the floor, bed on other side of the room- Her own room but you lay with her until she falls asleep etc
She is old enough you can talk to her about it. Be careful about using the term ‘big girl’ – if becoming a ‘big girl’ means she loses all closeness with you she may just pass on being a ‘big girl’.

Good luck and give us some updates.

interesting article

I WAS DOING SOME RESERACH ON THIS VERY TOPIC AND FOUND THIS ARCTICLE SEE BELOW

Children 'should sleep with parents until they're five'

Sian Griffiths


Margot Sunderland, director of education at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London, says the practice, known as “co-sleeping”, makes children more likely to grow up as calm, healthy adults.
Sunderland, author of 20 books, outlines her advice in The Science of Parenting, to be published later this month.
She is so sure of the findings in the new book, based on 800 scientific studies, that she is calling for health visitors to be issued with fact sheets to educate parents about co-sleeping.
“These studies should be widely disseminated to parents,” said Sunderland. “I am sympathetic to parenting gurus — why should they know the science? Ninety per cent of it is so new they bloody well need to know it now. There is absolutely no study saying it is good to let your child cry.”
She argues that the practice common in Britain of training children to sleep alone from a few weeks old is harmful because any separation from parents increases the flow of stress hormones such as cortisol.
Her findings are based on advances in scientific understanding over the past 20 years of how children’s brains develop, and on studies using scans to analyse how they react in particular circumstances.
For example, a neurological study three years ago showed that a child separated from a parent experienced similar brain activity to one in physical pain.
Sunderland also believes current practice is based on social attitudes that should be abandoned. “There is a taboo in this country about children sleeping with their parents,” she said.
“What I have done in this book is present the science. Studies from around the world show that co-sleeping until the age of five is an investment for the child. They can have separation anxiety up to the age of five and beyond, which can affect them in later life. This is calmed by co-sleeping.”
Symptoms can also be physical. Sunderland quotes one study that found some 70% of women who had not been comforted when they cried as children developed digestive difficulties as adults.
Sunderland’s book puts her at odds with widely read parenting gurus such as Gina Ford, whose advice is followed by thousands.
Ford advocates establishing sleep routines for babies from a very early age in cots “away from the rest of the house” and teaching babies to sleep “without the assistance of adults”.
In her book The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers she writes that parents need time by themselves: “Bed sharing . . . more often than not ends up with parents sleeping in separate rooms” and exhausted mothers, a situation that “puts enormous pressure on the family as a whole”.
Annette Mountford, chief executive of the parenting organisation Family Links, confirmed that the norm for children in Britain was to be encouraged to sleep in cots and beds, often in separate bedrooms, from an early age. “Parents need their space,” she said. “There are definite benefits from encouraging children into their own sleep routine in their own space.”
Sunderland says moving children to their own beds from a few weeks old, even if they cry in the night, has been shown to increase the flow of cortisol.
Studies of children under five have shown that for more than 90%, cortisol rises when they go to nursery. For 75%, it falls whenever they go home.
Professor Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Washington State University, who has written a foreword to the book, said Sunderland’s arguments were “a coherent story that is consistent with neuroscience. A wise society will take it to heart”.
Sunderland argues that putting children to sleep alone is a peculiarly western phenomenon that may increase the chance of cot death, also known as sudden infant death syndrome (Sids). This may be because the child misses the calming effect on breathing and heart function of lying next to its mother.
“In the UK, 500 children a year die of Sids,” Sunderland writes. “In China, where it [co-sleeping] is taken for granted, Sids is so rare it does not have a name.”

Co-sleeping Article

Awesome article! "A wise society will take it to heart."
Original link is here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1083020.ece