I've made a mess of my kids and now i don't know how to fix it. We let our daughter share our bed, when she woke in the night, for her first 6 years. When I became pregnant we tried to make her stay in her bed. She did ok because she could see that I was getting bigger and there really wasn't much room for her. After my son was born, he stayed in our room (not our bed) because he had breathing issues. Our daughter started coming back to our bed. When our son was a year old (daughter 7), we bought a house and made them each a wonderful room to sleep in. At first, everything was new, so they slept with us. One excuse after another... they are still sleeping with us. My daughter is 9 now, and my son is 3. We have tried everything we've heard or read to get them in their own beds. Everyone is so helpful with the advice, but nothing is working. Here's what I'm looking at from just this week: My daughter is very active during the day, she likes to run and play outdoors, she rides horses and does exercises at the YMCA, so I feel she has enough daily activity to burn that energy down for bedtime. She does her homework , eats well, feeds her animals, and plays games or watches tv all before 7:30. At 7:30 she showers and gets ready for bed. By 8pm she's in bed with a book and usually reads herself to sleep by 9pm... sounds great, right? Well, come midnight, 2am, 3am, 5am... she is up, standing by my bed telling me she had a bad dream, or she heard a noise or she's scared.... I'm soooo tired at those times, i know i nod off on her and wake suddenly and find her still standing there. I've sent her back to her room, but she comes back... I tell her to put her tv on, she comes back, i let her turn lights on, or read... she comes back... I sit with her, but she is panicked when she hears a creak or the wind. She just wants to be in my room, doesn't matter where, in bed, at the foot of my bed, on my floor...doesn't matter... I give in after doing this all night because i know she needs sleep for school and i need some rest. She's really hard to wake in the morning, but she seems fine during the day. I don't know what else to do with her. My husband tries to be really strict and tries punishment, she doesn't care, she'll take it to sleep in our room. I want to just make a place on the floor for her and tell her to not wake me up anymore, just lay down there and sleep. But i can hardly stand the thought of my precious girl sleeping on the floor like a dog when she has a beautiful bed to sleep in. And my husband completely disagrees with that idea (letting her lay on the floor), he feels that she is getting her way and says we should be stern with her and not let her stay, however, he doesn't wake up all night long when she comes in the room, so it's all on me.
Now my son is different, he's 3 and can't fall asleep with out me, I've tried to be strict with him and let him scream and cry himself to sleep, but he keeps my daughter awake, so it seems to be a vicious circle. When he does fall asleep in his room, he also wakes, but he sneaks in my bed without me realizing it, most of the time. When my daughter wakes me up and i see him in my bed, i take him back to his room (he usually stays asleep), but just the habit, I guess, that he wakes and comes to my room. So, should I make a place for both of them? Then we can all get a good nights sleep? Sounds like the easy way, so I'm very leery of it, plus the fact that my husband doesn't agree with it.... I'm at a loss.... and trying to find stuff on the Internet about 9 year olds still waking up is useless, I feel like i have the only one!!!! Please help.
