Marriage Is Separate From Child
Q. Having read your books, we know you advise against letting children sleep with parents. Do you feel the same way about letting young children crawl into their parents’ bed in the morning? Also, should the parents’ bedroom be generally “off limits” to children?
A. I am, indeed, generally disapproving of parents and children sleeping together. It’s important for children to understand their parents’ marriage does not include them.
This distinction positions the marriage at center stage in the family, at the focal point of attention.
Coming to grips with the fact that the husband/wife relationship is the primary relationship in the family helps the young child divest of self-centeredness, acquire a sense of independence and move securely toward eventual emancipation.
Being allowed to sleep with parents prevents a child from seeing and developing respect for this distinction. On the surface, sleeping together seems idyllic and nurturing. The togetherness seems to contribute to a child’s sense of security and self-esteem.
In fact, the opposite is true.
A child cannot achieve complete autonomy unless parents first establish the autonomy - separateness - of their marriage. Autonomy is virtually synonymous with self-esteem. Therefore, what looks like a very nurturing arrangement actually extends dependency and interferes significantly with emotional growth.
Ah, but all the rules have their exceptions, and this one, too, can be suspended under special circumstances.
These include when the child is ill, or is recovering from an experience that has temporarily upset his/her security (death of a pet, for instance), or for a night or two after the family has moved to a new home, thus giving the child time to adjust to the new surroundings.
There’s no problem, either, with letting a child crawl into bed with parents in the morning for some “cuddle time.” I see absolutely no parallel between this and letting children share the marital bed on a nightly basis. The one is playfully innocent, the other indulgent and insidious.
When they were younger, both of our kids occasionally got into bed with us in the mornings. Amy continued to do so until 12 or 13, when, as is typical of teens, she suddenly decided she wanted nothing to do with us at all.
On your question concerning the sanctity of the parents’ bedroom, this is an individual decision. My personal feeling is that the parents’ room should, in general, be “off limits” to children.
When our children were young, they had to have permission to enter our room. But then, we extended the same rule of courtesy to them concerning their rooms. As they got older, the rule relaxed to become: If the door is closed, you may not go in unless you ask permission, but if the door is open, the room is yours.
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