How to make my 7 year old sleep on his own?
Hello everyone. I am very new in this site so i do not know too much about it. Ok, so this is how it goes. I am 23 years old and a single mother of a 7 year old lovely boy. Recently my mother moved out of what now is my apartment, to live with my grandmother, and so i stayed alone with my kid. I have been seeing this guy for about 8 months, he comes over and spends the night with me on the weekends and since my son has been on vacation with his grandparents well i have nothing to worry about, but when he's home he sleeps with me except for when my boyfriend comes over he would sleep with my mom and not really wanting to. My son comes home tomorrow and i sit here thinking to myself, how am i going to have my privacy now with my boyfriend if my mom is gone and my son will eventually sleep in my bed every single day now?? He is terrified to sleep on his own! A few months ago i bought him a set of bunk beds that he really wanted but someone had to sleep with him the whole night or else he would run back to my room! Then i decided to give the bunkbeds to my brother who actually needed them(bad idea). Now i have no bed for my son to sleep in, so should i tell my boyfriend my son will be sleeping with us, or should i make my son sleep on his own? how do you teach a child to sleep by themselves when they are terrified of being alone?? I reay do not think my boyfriend would like the idea of all of us sleeping on the same bed. I really need some advice, so anything will be greatly appreciated. Thankyou
Buy the child his own bed.
Buy the child his own bed. Put it in his room.
You need to make this child a bedtime routine in the world’s worst way. It needs to be firm, nonnegotiable and it is going to take patience and determination from you to enforce it. You have spent seven years creating the co-sleeping monster it is not going to be fixed overnight.
An hour before bedtime, he takes a bath/shower and brushes his teeth.
He goes to his room and lays out his clothes for the next day and makes sure his back pack is packed for school/daycare/camp.
He then gets to lay quietly in bed and read until 10 minutes before his bedtime.
Ten minutes before bedtime you come in and read to him for ten minutes. When it is bed time, light out, close the door and he is in bed for the night. If he is scared of the dark let him have a night light.
If he gets out of bed, you put him back in.
He cries, you ignore.
Repeat, over and over. He will get out of bed a lot. He will test you to see if you really mean it. He will attempt to sneak into your bed in the middle of the night. Get up, walk him back to bed and make him get back into his own bed.
Training a child is like training an animal. Consistency, patience and a loving but firm attitude.
If this is genuinely going on
If this is genuinely going on and you have "no idea" how to fix it, what to do, and you haven't even THOUGHT about sleeping arrangements for your CHILD then MY GOD WOMAN you need to take a step back and evaluate yourself and what you are doing as a parent!!!!
I'm guessing he didn't sleep with GM and GP on vacation... so this is something you have done to him.
Thanks for your great advice.
Thanks for your great advice. Now i just wanted to clear something up. I know it sounds like i want to get rid of my son to have alone time with my boyfriend, but in reality its not actually like that. I mean i do want to have my privacy but i also want my son to start to be a little more independent, he's way too attached to me since his father went to prison he just got very attached and its very understandable. So when i start my new job i wont be able to spend much time with him and i know he'll hate the idea, so then i thought that i should start by making him sleep by himself because he's a big boy now and its time for him to get away from mom a little bit. As for his biological father, like i said he's now in prison. Him and my son where very close to eachother and when he left it affected my munchkin very much. Well anyways, just wanted to explain myself better, i really didnt want people to have the idea that im trying to get rid of my little one. And again, thanks for the great advice, i will try it and i hope it works:)
Thanks all for the great
Thanks all for the great advice, all of your answers where really good and i agree with you all. I'm not trying to do this to have alone time with my boyfriend only, but for my son to be a little independent as he is a big boy now. Imagine how awkward it would be for him to sleep in the same bed with my boyfriend?? It does sound really bad. Now "beaccountable" my son's father is in a federal prison so that is the reason we are not together and i rather not have him in my life for that reason but he can always be in my son's life because that is his father and they both deserve to see each other . My son has visit him in prison, and he'll be coming out next year but he will continue his life and i will continue mine.