My daughter is 8 yrs old and doesnt like to sleep in her room,

Jaime - posted on 09/16/2009

Neither does my 9 year old daughter. We use to argue with her and make her and then she would stay up till late at night crying. So right know she sleeps on the couch in our living room I 'm not sure if that was the right decision. But hey she goes to sleep and has a reastful night when she does sleep on the couch.

Katie - posted on 09/16/2009

i had the same problem until this year and my daughter is 9...on accassion she still gives me the " mommy you have daddy to sleep with and i have no one" so we let our dog sleep with her and they are like best friends now!

Jan - posted on 09/16/2009

I had this problem also when our daughter was 4. I got her a lamp with fish swimming around and she watches the fish until she falls asleep. She still comes into our bed, but very rarely now. We also bribed her with pet shops when she slept in her bed for 5 days in a row. It worked! Good Luck!

Michelle - posted on 09/16/2009

I would let her sleep in your room, but NOT in your bed. If you allow this, you are encouraging the behavior. Lay a sleeping bag down on the floor and tell her if she needs to sleep in your room, it will have to be on the floor. Eventually, she will like her bed better than your floor!

Lynn - posted on 09/16/2009

My daughter was sleeping with me up until she was four years old. I too had tried almost everything, then we got her a tv and put it in her room and she started to sleep in her own room with no problem ever since. She is now almost 8 also. She used to keep the volume on, no if she feels she's going to fall asleep, she mutes it and we set the sleep timer. Maybe you could try a tv in the room? I have slept with one on since she was born, which is probably why my daughter does now also. Good Luck!

Rhoda - posted on 09/16/2009

Hi, I have a 10 year old son who WILL NOT sleep in his own room, and I too have tried everything. I did the monster spray, the rearra nging, I bought him a different bed (twice), I put glow in the dark statrs up, I tried the bath, the massage, redecorating, I tried laying with him until he fell asleep, sitting on his floor until he fell asleep....I even tried bribery (as suggested by his therapist-oh yeah he's on his fourth therapist right now trying to help him with this)....Here's the bottom line. He is anxious, he is scared and no amount of reassuring at night is going to fix this. Time may though. My latest approach is not to fight it, but to work on the anxiety with him and with the help and a much better therapist, and most importantly is realizing that this is going to take awhile and until he feels safer and stops worrying it wil continue. But I have a lot of faith in nurturing and patience. Good luck to all.

Janine - posted on 09/15/2009

Reassurance is obviously the first key to success for you. My first thought however was a night light. Secondly - to get her more interested in wanting to be in her room how about you discuss with her how she would like to have her room decorated (according to your budget of course) That way she will feel like it really is her space that she created and will be more comfortable in there. Thirdly, steer her away from any news regarding awful incidences regarding other children being taken etc and of course never discuss it around her - kids do hear everything. Good luck!

Sheila - posted on 09/15/2009

I have the same problem. My daughter is 7 years old and does not sleep in her room. She does play in her romm all day but when it comes to night time forget it.

Brianna - posted on 09/15/2009

I had this problem recently with my 6 year old. Turned out that she really didn't like her room anymore. She was fine during the day, but at night she just hated her room. so, we let her design her new room - we painted and decorated just how she wanted it, and now she loves it! She rarely comes to our room n the night now.

Diane - posted on 09/15/2009

we have used the "monster spray" with huge success, we chose a cheap body spray and made a new label for it on the pc and used it each night before bed, she could"smell" that the spray was there and she was perfectly happy that monsters would never dare enter her room

Diane - posted on 09/15/2009

where kids sleep is always an issue in the early years, is her coming into bed with you a problem for you and your husband? if it is then she needs to be comforted and settled back into her own bed, if it isnt a problem then let her be with you , its all about what is right for your family good luck :-)

Kylie - posted on 09/15/2009

Just a question but have you recently seperated with a partner? I recently seperated with my Husband and I have found that my 13 year old daughter will not sleep in her room. I think that it is due to the fact that we are all of a sudden a house with only women and that she doesn't feel secure without the man in the house any more. Its just a thought if you are in the same situation.

Leslie - posted on 09/14/2009

I have a five year old who shares a room with her 14 year old sister. My older daughter took on one of my old rituals and has taught my younger daughter to pick a number and then they listen to the radio and count that many songs. Usually by the time the song gets to the number she has chosen, she is out like a light.

You have got to make bedtime fun. Just think about what she likes to do and incorporate it into her bedtime ritual somehow. I really do like the idea of the warm bath and massage. That is really helpful. I have also heard of using a spray bottle with "monster" solution, commonly known as tap water, in it to ward off bad things that she may sense in her room.

Just remember this will end....they are only 8 once.

Kimberly - posted on 09/14/2009

There are a few things to try.
One of those small LED nightlights; it gives off a soft green glow instead of bright light.
Another thing is to make a bedtime routine. Something like: bath then jammies, brush teeth, then climb into bed for a short story, maybe a drink of water then a hug n kiss and goodnight, telling her you will be there in the morning. That may take a bit of doing, and you'll have to put her back to bed many times. If she is stressed, try a light massage with lotion. For my daughter I used a vanilla lavender lotion that I repackaged in a really pretty bottle and called it my "Magic Lotion." She had horrible growing pains in her legs and it helped her to relax. And a bit of night time classical music may help. I used a small CD player and put it on VERY low. She did not need the music after about 6 months.
Another fun thing to do is get some glow in the dark stars! My daughter felt so much better when we did that for her. It gives off just a little light, and she can maybe sing Twinkle Twinkle before bedtime or make a wish when you turn out the lights. My step-daughter is very fond of the stars, and we would put up one or two stars a night until we ran out of them. Some are on the ceiling and some are on the walls. (they stick with a special adhesive that will NOT hurt the walls).
And she is old enough to tell you why she doesn't want to sleep in there. If she is afraid of something, find a way for her to tell you. Do a "monster check" a few times and see if that helps (check in the closet, under the bed, that kind of thing).
Try telling her it is her room with her stuff and what can hurt her in there? Explain that you and Daddy have your room and she has her room.
You need your private time with hubby, so she is also the right age to learn to knock on the door and wait for you to say come in, or she can wait at the door for you to come out.
Hope this helps!

Cassie - posted on 09/14/2009

I have the same problem with my 9 yr old daughter! And I have tried everything. She will, however, sleep on the couch in the living room every night. It also helps her to fall asleep with the TV on, but volume is low. It just helps her feel like she's not alone and distracts her from those thoughts. I'd rather let her sleep on the couch than in my bed or have the fight to get her to sleep in her room!

Kryss - posted on 09/13/2009

Try a light or rearranging her room ...or perhaps have someone sleep with her a few nites in her room it wrked when my son was 5:)

Sylvia - posted on 09/13/2009

Is this a problem because her coming into your room is actually bothering you (waking you up, crowding the bed too much, squishing a younger sibling) or because you've heard so many times that it's bad for kids not to sleep alone?

I don't mean to sound negative about this -- it's just that I hear so often things like "We loved having our baby/toddler/kiddo in bed with us, but my mom / his mom / the neighbours / my sister / a book / some random stranger on the Internet convinced us that s/he really *needs* to learn to sleep alone", followed by a long, harrowing tale about doing the "cry it out" routine for weeks and weeks (or getting up 20 times in the night to take the kid back to bed, or sleeping on the floor outside the toddler's bedroom door for a week to "break" him of getting up at night), which obviously was horribly painful for all concerned ... and I just don't get it. I don't like sleeping alone. My husband doesn't like sleeping alone. Why do we get so much grief because our seven-year-old doesn't always like sleeping alone?

On the other hand, if this is genuinely a problem for your family -- she *wants* to sleep in her room but is scared, or you and/or your partner can't get to sleep or stay asleep with a restless eight-year-old in bed with you, or she is embarrassed because she thinks she's the only kid in Grade 3 who's afraid at night, or you have a younger child in bed with you already and four in the bed is just plain too many, or whatever -- then obviously you need to find a solution. You might start by trying to get at what, specifically, scares her. Is it too dark, and she would feel better with a night light or a mini flashlight? Did she see a movie recently that scared her, or something else that's giving her nightmares? Is the rest of the family sleeping together, and she maybe feels left out? Did she overhear someone talking about something bad happening to a child (like the Jaycee Dugard case, maybe) and now fears it might happen to her? Is there something in her room that looks scary in the shadows after you turn out the light? Does her room get really cold at night? Does the house (or something near the house) make funny noises at night that wake her up or scare her?

If you have the floor space, might it work to transition her to a sleeping bag or an air mattress or something on the floor near your bed, as an intermediate step between sleeping with you and sleeping alone in her own room?

Bottom line, though -- she'll grow out of it. If it's a serious issue for the family, you can probably help her grow out of it sooner by figuring out what's at the root of her fears and helping her reason them down to size. For example, last September after my daughter's Grade 1 teacher freaked her out by making a big deal about what to do if a strange adult tries to talk to you on the playground, she was scared that I might be kidnapped by a stranger on the bus someday and not come to take her home; we had a long talk about how very, very, very, very, extremely unlikely that is, and about how it's perfectly fine to talk to strangers but you must never, ever go off anywhere with a stranger, and she's not afraid of that happening anymore. If you know that she's afraid of being kidnapped from her bedroom, you could do some research on how often that actually happens to kids (it's EXTREMELY uncommon, we just hear about it a lot on the rare occasions when it happens) and explain it to her in terms that she understands, and that might well help her feel braver about sleeping alone.

Shawn - posted on 09/13/2009

Insist that she stay in her room and sleep. If she gets up, quietly put her back intoher bed. One person will give in after repeated attempts. You just have to be more persistant than she is. Google has advice that may suit you so you can work on it. Here is an article: http://childcare.about.com/od/behaviors/...

Chasity - posted on 09/13/2009

i agree with kimberly and hayden

Kimberly - posted on 09/13/2009

Will you allow her to have a night light? Maybe let her take alittle flashlight to bed with her. That might help.. I have a feeling she might rely on the light alot a first but as she is less scared she'll turn it off on her own and have a sense of secerity knowing she can have light when she needs it..

Hayden - posted on 09/13/2009

I had this problem with my stepson. I was only 18 and I was not sleeping with him it felt weird to me...My husband would lie with him til he fell asleep and then he had a night light there were times we'd open the door and leave the light on...He still sometimes came in but it wasn't like when we first started to live together and he wanted to do it every night...My three year old likes to sleep with me but isn't scared there are times when I let him and there are other times when I just take him back to bed and tell him good night he is at the age where I had to get him a night light too...maybe cover her window with a blanket so she can't see it while she is sleepin I know it might raise the electric bill but the shadows comin in through the window might be scary to her...

Chasity - posted on 09/13/2009

not me! my poor husband had to sleep in the floor. I occasionally enjoy the snuggling with mine, but I need my own space. Does your husband not get mad about this?

Ushi - posted on 09/13/2009

My daughter is 5 and she always ends up in my bed and I LOVE IT! I hope she snuggles with me until she's a teenager. We are so close and bonded...I wouldn't trade it for anything. Snuggle up!!

Chasity - posted on 09/13/2009

well my kids arn't quite as old as yours, but when mine get outta the bed i quietly take them back, i DO NOT give in to that in the bed thing! my oldest slept in the bed until 2, my second one never has, i mean make her feel safe, but there has to be a point when u stop allowing this

MaryAnn - posted on 09/13/2009

Quoting Chasity:

has she always been this way?

yes...I think because she hears all the missing children taht are taken from there room.

Chasity - posted on 09/13/2009

has she always been this way?