8-year-old should be sleeping in own bed

Question: My 8-year-old grandson still sleeps with his mother.

He has been in the middle of an on-again, off-again child-custody battle since he was 1, witnessing some pretty horrific situations.

He sleeps alone when he is with his father and when he spends the night out. I have told his mother that at 8, he should be in his own room or at least his own bed. -- D.S., New Orleans.

Answer: To make it through the bad times, your grandson and his mother may have needed the closeness of sleeping together. Co- sleeping is much more common today in our country than in recent decades. There are estimates that about a third of American parents are sleeping with their children.

Working away from home all day makes it very difficult for parents to give up the chance for closeness at night -- the only time together that many families have. And tired parents often find it easier to take infants in bed with them to comfort them when they wake up at night. The habit set up in infancy is very difficult to change in later years.

Learning to sleep alone is an issue of independence for the child and of separation for the parent. When there are stresses such as a long-contested divorce, it's easy to see how a parent and child might cling to co-sleeping.

If your grandson's mother has lived through the fear of losing access to him in a custody battle, she may find it difficult to give him up at night. She may also be lonely and afraid. Such feelings could interfere with her ability to recognize her child's needs and work to meet them.

At 8, a child certainly should be ready for separation at night. Since he sleeps alone elsewhere, he has demonstrated his ability to get himself to sleep and to stay asleep on his own. But a child who has been through a difficult divorce may be fearful about losing a parent or unusually sensitive to his mother's fragility or her need for him.

Perhaps the boy's mother could ask him whether he might like to sleep in his own room now. She could participate in his good-night ritual -- perhaps reading him a story before leaving him. He could still return to her bed when feeling stressed.

Though this might be hard for his mother, it could be a step toward growing up for your grandson. Maybe she could be encouraged to help him feel that it's OK now to separate at night.

Question: Since my 5-year-old grandson was a baby, his mother (my daughter) has been controlling his sleep so that he would sleep more at night. If he fell asleep in the car, she'd yell at him until he woke up. He'd cry bitterly!

Naps were limited to a half-hour from the age of 2.

He is a very nervous child, afraid of new situations. He has been hitting, biting and pinching us adults since we can remember -- but not children. Recently, when he slept at my house, he couldn't fall asleep until 10 p.m. and woke up at 3 a.m. He didn't allow himself to lie down and sleep until 11 a.m.!

Mothers are usually glad when a child naps, so I doubt there is much data on the consequences of torturing a child with non-sleep. But I'm hoping you can recommend some way to help. --E.V., Bellevue, Wash.

Answer: It sounds as you are worried about him as a nervous child who needs to fight for himself with adults -- biting, hitting, pinching. Those behaviors are common at age 2 but not at 5. He seems to know that other children won't tolerate this kind of aggression. Why do you adults?

Your grandson may be nervous and uncomfortable with change for other reasons, but it's easy to see how a child who has not had a chance to manage his own sleep patterns might feel out of control.

It sounds as if his mother (you don't mention his father) has a confused and confusing relationship with him. For some reason, she may have felt a need to control his sleep rather than respect his rhythms and need for naps. This may have made him dependent on her for his ability to sleep.

Your daughter may have a problem that she expresses by controlling her son's sleep, but we can't really help without knowing more about her.

We don't recommend that you tell her to loosen up on him, for she won't be likely to listen to you. It would be better for her to get advice from a pediatrician or other trusted individual.

Unfortunately, your grandson may have become conditioned to be frightened of sleep and to avoid it. Interfering with naps is especially troublesome, since children who do not get enough sleep (including naps) tend to sleep poorly.

Often children who wake up during the night, or too early, can be helped by going to bed earlier.

This boy certainly needs a new sleep schedule and routine, with rituals that help make bedtime relaxing instead of frightening.

Questions or comments should be addressed to Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and Dr. Joshua Sparrow, care of The New York Times Syndication Sales Corp., 122 E. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10168. Questions may also be sent by e-mail to: nytsyn- families@nytimes.com. Questions of general interest will be answered in this column. Drs. Brazelton and Sparrow regret that unpublished letters cannot be answered individually. Responses to questions are not intended to constitute or to take the place of medical or psychiatric evaluation, diagnosis or treatment. If you have a question about your child's health or well-being, consult your child's health-care provider. Distributed by the New York Times Syndicate

Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.