Ok, my son will be 7 in September, and still sleeps with me. While I like the snuggling part of it, my sleep is suffering. My son is big, and thrashy, and wakes me several times in the night. I'm struggling with chronic fatigue, an autoimmune condition that resists exact diagnosis (it acts like lupus but isn't) but is exacerbated by stress, and I'm a single parent and wage-slave, so must work full time. So the sleep thing has become a big stressor, and though I'd intended to co-sleep until my son didn't want to do it any more, I am now really wanting to sleep alone. I need all the sleep I can get.
The trouble is, my son and I are not seeing eye-to-eye on the issue, and he seems to have some anxiety about it. So I suggest that he might want to sleep in his own bed, and sometimes we'll start out that way, but five minutes later, he's back in my bed. Sometimes I'll go to his bed after he's asleep (I don't really care who sleeps where), but then at some point, he'll wake in the night, and come wake me up, try to get into his single-sized bed with me, which really doesn't work out. Whenever the subject comes up, he starts talking about how he's worried about nightmares, etc. So we talk about ways he can put himself in a positive frame of mind, think about happy dreams he could have, or how he can change dreams when he's in them...but really, he just wants to sleep in my armpit, or partially on top of or underneath me, and he's not buying it.
Any suggestions?
The trouble is, my son and I are not seeing eye-to-eye on the issue, and he seems to have some anxiety about it. So I suggest that he might want to sleep in his own bed, and sometimes we'll start out that way, but five minutes later, he's back in my bed. Sometimes I'll go to his bed after he's asleep (I don't really care who sleeps where), but then at some point, he'll wake in the night, and come wake me up, try to get into his single-sized bed with me, which really doesn't work out. Whenever the subject comes up, he starts talking about how he's worried about nightmares, etc. So we talk about ways he can put himself in a positive frame of mind, think about happy dreams he could have, or how he can change dreams when he's in them...but really, he just wants to sleep in my armpit, or partially on top of or underneath me, and he's not buying it.
Any suggestions?
