If you have a child that comes in and out of your bed, you are not alone, this is a very common problem.
Completing the sleep assessment form here may be a useful exercise to get support for child sleep - it helps you look at the difficulty objectively and provides clues and patterns of behaviour you may have not noticed. You need to check your child is fit and well and is getting lots of positive one-to-one attention from you in the day and that this behaviour is not a bid for your attention. Keeping a weekly sleep diary is useful once you start a sleep training programme to monitor progress. Find a printable sleep diary here.
There are several different ways of getting out of a 'kids in bed' situation. One of the most popular ways is "rapid return" which is outlined below:
Managing the child who wants to come into the parental bed -
- Every time your child comes into your bedroom/bed, you immediately get up and silently take them back to their bed. You do this every time they come into you; you may have to do it many times perhaps 50-100 for very persistent children.
- Keep calmly returning your child to their bed with the minimum of fuss and attention, check you are not rewarding their misbehaviour by paying a lot of attention to it, you need to be as dull and boring as possible, no eye contact, no talking to them or cuddles. Once your child realises you mean business they start to cooperate. Your body language and expression convey a lot, the message is that night time is for sleeping in their bed.
- If your child refuses to stay in bed, you have several options on how to deal with this. They roughly fall into these categories the no cry,the cry approach or other gentler methods outlined here to sleep training. Choose an approach that suits you that you can stick to and follow through on, consistency is vital to success. Sleep experts suggest you try an approach for at least two weeks before you decide it isn't working. Keeping a sleep diary helps you to monitor progress - find a printable sleep diary here.
- For older children using reward charts an choices and consequences works well. Reward charts can be combined with the above sleep training programmes in a mix and match approach.
- If you need to keep your child in their room then a stair gate across the door works very effectively in keeping them safe and prevents them roaming around the house or coming into your bedroom.
- If you do not hear the child coming into your room and you do not want to use a stair gate on their room, you can either put one across your door or tie a bell to your door so you hear them when they come in. The trick is not to let them get into your bed which is their goal.
- Check you have a good bedtime routine established and that your child has learnt to go to sleep on their own. You may also find it helpful to look at the suggestions on bedtimes for older children
It is really hard setting loving limits and helping to teach your child to sleep. You know it is in everyone's best interests that your child has a good night's sleep, they need their sleep and so do you if you are to function effectively the next day. Interestingly children feel more secure when there are clear firm boundaries that are consistently applied by a calm adult. Children will push these boundaries as this is part of the job of growing up, as parents it is important we understand this and have clear firm rules we stick to.