The issue of sleep and where children should sleep at night is one of the issues on which health and mind professionals least agree. Some tell you that nothing happens if the child sleeps with you, but that after six months he must leave the room, others that nothing happens if he sleeps with you until the age of three, or even the five and others you do whatever you really want, because it is not a really important matter while the child is well.
As I position myself among the latter, that is, that the child should sleep where he is comfortable and calm, wherever he is, I am still surprised when someone makes a very sharp recommendation of any of the other options, as is the case from Miguel Silveira, a psychologist who states that letting children sleep in parents' bed is going against nature and against common sense.
To find out what I am talking about, you can read his text in his blog, where he seems to be talking about a case he has attended, a woman, who had to consult him worried about not being able to “make independence” to his son, for not being able to give him nocturnal autonomy, not wanting to go to his room to sleep alone with two years of age. This, which for Silveira seems to be a problem generated by the mother, who has not known how to put herself in her thirteen and who has consented that the child sends at home, seems to me so banal in reality, that I have wanted use my common sense, and not yours, to offer my opinion about it, which is not better or worse, but simply different.
As you have been able to read, if you have read the text, start by exposing the problem and then offer your conclusion, which is the following:
The child continues and seems to be like this until he turns six, the mother confessed to me. Apparently he had read several books to solve the problem but there were contradictions. While some pretend that the child sleeps only as soon as possible other professionals say that if he is separated from his parents he will feel helpless and break into tears. Just thinking that your child can feel helplessness has made these parents succumb and be able to sleep separately until the child asks to sleep alone, which can occur when he is six years old or when he is thirteen, you know.
Given that he is now two years old, it is possible that it will happen with six or thirteen, as he says, or that it will happen with three or four. Impossible to really know, so it is not necessary to say "thirteen" as a figure to show how absurd it is to sleep with a child. Speaking of the logical evolution of a child, what a child does not understand with two years, because his reasoning is still underdeveloped, it is possible that he does understand it with those mentioned three or four years, when he is better able to think and understand that, even if he is alone at night, nothing will happen to him. And let's not talk if the child is six. It is enough to treat the subject naturally so that the child sleeps alone without stress at the moment we propose it. A case is of no use, but since in my house nobody tried to force my son to sleep only when I was little, he had no problem, fear or aversion to do it when he was precisely six years old.
In any case, if I were a psychologist, that I am not, I would tell this mother that, for the sake of the couple, if they want to sleep together, try to do so by adding another bed to the room or buying a bigger bed to sleep all three together.
Silveira continues his writing saying the following:
It is absurd for a child to suffer such helplessness that it causes trauma to sleep in his crib or in his bed. Since a child is born, a process of progressive separation of his mother and his parents begins that culminates in emancipation by becoming an adult and that is why, among many other reasons, a child should not sleep with his parents but in his own crib or Bed a few days after birth and nothing happens.
Well, trauma is not the same, but a good time of crying may be yes. And hearing a baby cry annoying, bothers a lot, and as children usually wake up several times at night and let you get little sleep, as fatigue accumulates and nerves end up in full bloom, have a good time Crying for sleep is not a good taste dish for any parent. If we talk about a two-year-old boy, being a little different, he is still annoying, because the boy messes with you. With that age many people agree or not according to what the child asks. Asking to be with your mother, asking to sleep with her, asking for physical contact does not seem insane, but rather the opposite ... I never want to see myself in the situation of seeing that my children have grown up and reject me because one day I taught them that They couldn't be with me at night. I don't want them not to count on me because I taught them that they couldn't count on me. I say this because he says that children have to be helped to emancipate themselves and that is why they have to sleep alone at night ... I say that they will emancipate when they can do so much if they sleep with me or not, because I don't think they want to sleep them and their partners in my bed. And I add that, as I want that in addition to being independent they are sociable, friendly people and people who appreciate contact, a hug, support when they feel alone and attention when they need it, I will always agree to sleep with them at night if they need it , so that they learn that same.
It is the law of life and sleeping with their parents goes against nature, against common sense, against the need and convenience of the couple sleeping together for obvious reasons, against the law that says that every human being should get used to fending for himself, Against the law that says that a child cannot establish his or her dominance over the parents with the trick of crying. Those who have to sleep in the double bed are the parents who are called matrimonial for that.
It is the law of life but the government is not doing anything to prevent half of the young people from being unemployed and consequently cannot buy a flat and emancipate themselves. Come on, we are going to let them cry in their rooms so that they can never become independent. I agree, yes, that human beings must fend for themselves, but I can't see how it can help the fact that a child sleeps only if it turns out that when the emancipation project finally ends and he leaves with his partner, they will get together in a room to share a bed, destroying all the work we have done parents. It may be more important that children acquire autonomy during the day in the usual routines: that they learn to dress alone, that they begin to be responsible for their things, that they can make decisions at home, etc.
With regard to the trick of crying, as I said, it depends on what the demand should be our response. Let's say our son cries and bellows, lying on the floor, arching his body and disturbing all the neighbors because he has not eaten for twelve hours. No one will talk about the child's trick, but in any case of irresponsibility of the parents, who have not fed him throughout the day. If instead the child cries because at ten o'clock at night he has thought that it is a good time to go to the park to swing, here we will have to pull educational tools and dialogue to avoid going out the door of the house.
And in reference to where each one has to sleep, it does not seem a strong argument to say that those who have to sleep in the double bed are the parents, because that is why the bed receives that name. It is a very simple argument that I will give now, but it is that many couples are not married, they are not marriage, and consequently they should not sleep either in that bed. On the other hand, in my house the food is made in the kitchen, but it is also eaten in the kitchen. I already know it. We would have to eat it in the dining room, which is why it is called that. I only hope that our children will not be affected by our extreme laziness, by not taking the dishes and utensils to the dining room every day, both back and forth, as mandated by the laws of common sense.
What a way to distort natural laws and attempt against common sense! And then they want those children to grow up healthy and normal ... The children to their bed!
I don't know what natural law is being distorted. In my house there are walls and that is why there are rooms, but thanks to the real estate bubble of a few years ago they became thirty square meters, where a family has to sleep together even after reading how insane and abnormal children will grow. And if we stop to think a little, surely many of us slept in our childhood with our parents and surely many of our parents did it with our grandparents. The world would have to be full of young people hugging their parents and full of insecure adults and unable to make decisions for having slept as children with their parents.
