That's very weird. Thanks for sharing. Also, you absolutely cannot lump cosleeping with a toddler in with cosleeping in with cosleeping with a baby. The baby people do it because they want to avoid waking up and walking into another room to feed many times per night. With a toddler, there is no good reason.
Um, where are you getting that from? It makes the toddler happier and more comforted, and in this case (and probably most cases) the parent also.
And, even though a toddler or young child won't tend to wake up as much as a baby, they still do a lot — bad dreams, loud noises, earthquakes, etc. — and having a parent right there next to them is a lot different than not. It can be the difference between them going right back to sleep or sitting up and screaming and then being wide awake for an hour.
See all the studies linked in this thread. The only reason people do it is to try to get past the hard phase of sleep training your child. Those who give up end up co-sleeping, and will regret it later.
Sorry, that's nuts. That might be why many Americans do it, but most of the world does it by choice, and virtually nobody regrets it. And once your children are beyond the infant stage where there is some (as TFA notes, sub-lightning-strike) danger, there is none.
It sounds shitty when you don't actually have kids, but once you have them and try it, it's just kind of like oh, I see. It is self-evidently great for the kids, and it also doesn't really limit your adult life much (you can just get up when they are asleep, and come back when you're sleepy).
Anyway, avoiding training babies to sleep alone certainly not "the only reason people do it", or even a reason most people do it (although it does have that benefit).
I have kids. It's still shitty. Many people who have tried both agree. You are trying to justify how it's not that bad to artificially pretend to sleep until they fall asleep, at which point you continue to go about your business. That's a huge nuisance, and describing it as anything but doesn't make sense.
The rest of the world does it because living conditions typically dictate it, since you aren't living in a large house in the backgroundt area.
I get it, you don't like putting your kids to bed. That's fine, but most parents really don't find it to be a "huge nuisance", and certainly not when measured against the backdrop of all the other crap you have to do when you have kids.
So I really doubt that most parents, even in America, would find it "very weird" that war1025 sleeps with his young children. (You don't have to "artificially pretend to sleep", by the way, you can just tell them a story or read your own stuff, or whatever... even just tell them goodnight and you'll be back later).
It's actually very normal, in a lot of the world, and also objectively less annoying than many things most parents do every day. (For instance, I certainly find driving my kids to school in the morning a hell of a lot more annoying than anything bedtime/sleep related.)
I'm not saying you personally have to do it, or enjoy it, just that it comes off pretty strange to characterize such a routine parental activity as going to bed with your baby/kids as a "very weird, shitty, huge nuisance"...
An oddly condescending comment. If you read my post again, you will see that we are both types of terrible co-sleeping parents. Both lazy and without good reason.
Maybe you missed it, but we also have 6 month old twins who are co-sleeping with us. We sleep on a futon-style floor bed, and the toddler moved herself to another floor bed next to ours of her own accord just a week or two ago.
Anyway, we're used to people thinking our parenting tactics are odd. Works for us.
