Anyone co-sleeping with an older child(5+)

[Zoesmama]

My 7 year old has been back in my bed awhile. If she don't come to bed with me she ends up sleep walking to the sofa and I wake up and find her there. Weird she doesn't always come straight to my bed when she starts off in hers. I'd say 1 out of 5 she comes to my bed but the rest to the sofa. They are the same distance but strangely she sometimes walks to the kitchen when she wakes in the night. When I've been up still when she has done it she will be talking but I can't really understand what she is talking about. Real words and all but doesn't make sense to me. I think she is still sleeping during these.

But anyway when she's not in bed I have a hard time sleeping. But at the same time she is a bed hog.

[meemee]

i am a single mom. and we are cuddlers. so my 8 year old and i cosleep
with no end in sight.

we now have a queen size bed but we are 'twinners' there are toys and books on the bed with just enough space for us to sleep in. which is of course twin size

[BJlovesherbabies]

I have 4 little fellas running around: 8, 7, 4, and 2. We have a king in our rom w/ a twin right next to it. School just started for my big boys and they headed back into their room (together on a double bed) for sleep during the week. However....the weekend is a free for all. The big boys love to cuddle up in "the big bed" or sometimes ask for a little brother to swap and snuggle one of them in the twin. We love having no set sleeping arrangements on the weekends (as we did all summer long). The strange thing is my 7 yr old will sometimes sleepwalk into our room during the week. No big..he just hops in bed w/ hubby in the twin or me and the baby if hubs is in the other bed already. Wonder if he sub-consciously misses being in the same room?? He's not unhappy when he shows up....just appears and hops right in for snuggle. Not a peep from Mr. 8 yr old though...he's dead to the world!

[lovbeingamommy]

My DS will be 5 in 7 weeks and we have no plans to stop co-sleeping.

[CrazyCatLady]

My dd is six and her and I co-sleep every night. She doesn't even have (or want) her own bed at this point.

I am starting to get kind of tired of her though. She tosses and turns a LOT and is a blanket hog. She also grinds her teeth really loudly. But for now she needs the comfort of sleeping with me. And to be honest I get a big kick out of how much it bothers my MIL. So she'll probably be with me for a lot longer.

[stormborn]

My 8 yo still sleeps with us most of the time. I don't mind...we have two twins & a queen for four of us so there's usually plenty of room for all

[Mom2M]

My 5 year old still co sleeps with the baby and me. I haven't thought too much about her moving to her own bed, I love her being with me. I asked her a few times if she wanted to and she said no.
My DH works overnight, though, so no problems with him not liking it!

[MacKinnon]

DD is 6 1/2, she and DS, 3 1/2, co-sleep with Daddy in one bed, and I sleep with new baby in another. We're slowly, sort of, moving toward DD#1 and DS sleeping together in a double bed, and DH possibly returning to our bed. We've had separate sleeping arrangements since DS was born. Four in a bed was too many, so we split up.

[Peony]

All of my kids still co-sleep. 7y old DD1 and almost 4 DD2 sleep downstairs with DH. I have 1y old DS upstairs with me.

[mumm]

My 10 year old. He either sleeps in a room with his 7 year old sister (which is what I prefer) or he sleeps in my room on a queen mattress on the floor. Depends on how scared he is.

The "babies" (3 years) start the night in their own rooms but come to me to nurse around 3 and 5 am. I *try* to put them back in their own eds but it doesn't always happen.

[Llyra]

DD1 is six. She wasn't cosleeping, for ages and ages. For a long time, when she was 3 and 4, she flat-out refused to cosleep. But this last few weeks she's returned to sleeping with me a few times a week. I think she's just feeling anxious, with so many changes in her life-- just starting first grade and stuff.

The only issue we have is that sometimes she wets my bed. I think she's overtired, from getting up early, and therefore sleeps unusually deeply-- she hadn't wet the bed in AGES, until school started. I'm sure anxiety has something to do with it, too. Anyway, as a result, I'm trying to move her to the trundle bed on the floor in my room.

[Addismom]

Need Co-sleeping advice for 6 year old won't fall sleep alone

I read all of the strings about older kids who are still happily co-sleeping. I don't have a problem with the sleeping part as it is delicious and cuddly and no one is complaining. Except, I am getting tired and a bit worried that my six year old can not fall asleep without me or my husband right next to her. It is a struggle for me because it cuts into my alone time at night and I find that after 30 minutes of books, then another 15 minutes soothing back tickles and snuggles and then 15 - 20 mins more minutes of her tossing and turning with no signs of dozing off, I am glancing at the clock and begin to feel really resentful. After an hour+ of lying with her and she is still not asleep, I tell her I need to get up and go through all of the assurances that she is ok. But she is too panicked and can't fall asleep. Instead she calls out for me ever 3 minutes - which drives me more crazy. After several attempts to get her to fall asleep on her own, I finally I give in because it's too dramatic in which by that time she will finally fall asleep. (my husband works at night so he is not an option).
I feel like I really have done a disservice to her by not doing any gentle sleep-training. We just figured she would feel so confident and secure that it wouldn't be a problem. But now I am beginning to wonder.
Any advice/assurances would be greatly appreciated.

[cmoma]

We co-sleep with our almost 7 yr old and our 4.5 yr old..on occasion our 16m old joins us too, but usually only when she is teething hard or sick, she co-slept till around 8m, then transitioned to a pack n play in her room,if she sleeps with me otherwise she just nurses on and off all night long and doesn't actually sleep. Anyway bedtime is becoming a struggle for us too, both kids need us to fall asleep with them, but they can not fall asleep together, so we have to stagger it, sometimes it take 30+min with each of them...sometimes longer sometimes they fight it. The older one is more difficult and resists bedtime bigtime, which causes issues the next day when he can't focus because he fell asleep too late and woke to early.

Tonight was the last straw for me, trying to get them to bed alone, it's 10pm and the 4.5 yr old is still awake, the almost 7 yr old just finally fell asleep ....So tomorrow is a new day, with new a new bedtime rhythm and hopefully soon we can have some peace to the end of our days..

[hillymum]

Over the summer my two older sons (11 and 10) would take turns in sleeping with me. My youngest (6) has alway co-slept but now starts off in his own bed in his room. Up until start of this week I would cuddle him to sleep, but now I have moved ont an armchair next to his bed. This evening I sat with him for 5 minutes then told him I had jobs to do so I had to leave. He was fine with it and fell a sleep without any fuss. I would be very surprised if he sleeps all night in his bed though. Thats only happened about 15 times in the past few years.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

My 9yo (will be 10 next month) dd has started coming to sleep with me again after having her own room for just under a year. Sometimes I even ask her if she wants to sleep with me because I sleep better knowing she is safe beside me.

Ds still sleeps in our room but he has his own bed next to ours he is 5 will be 6 next month.

[proud mama of 2]

I have a 9 year old DS, 5 year old DD and 14 month old DS and we co-sleep most of the time. Since school has started and the big kids need their sleep I put them to bed in their own rooms but the 5 year old almost always ends up in my bed.

[velochic]

Dd will be 9 in a few months. She still co-sleeps, and in fact has never slept nor fallen asleep alone in her own bed except on Girl Scout and school camping trips. She still wants (needs?) to be parented to sleep and while that may seem inconvenient (and sometimes it is), we go to bed early ourselves, so it's usually not a problem. She's is and will be an only, so I cherish this part of raising her. We are very close and I think that co-sleeping has been a contributing factor to our continued strong bond.