Co-sleeping with older children is more common than you think, but even parents who do it worry it's not OK

Parents who decide to co-sleep with their children can find themselves batting away derision or criticisms from friends and family.

When it comes to kids' sleep — as with almost any aspect of parenting — judgement abounds.

There are also the rightful safety concerns about co-sleeping, and parents should be provided with in-depth information about minimising any sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) risks for babies.

But what about when the co-sleeping child is a toddler or even well into primary school?

Sophia co-sleeps with her nearly four-year-old son, and is aware that the decision she and her partner have made goes against what some believe to be normal or optimal for their son.

"We've always been very 'follow his lead', and not so much society's lead," Sophia tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

"We believe the best thing for nourishing his mind and body is feeling like he's safe 24 hours a day, not just at day time, [but] night time as well."

School-aged children sleeping in their parents' bed is more common than we think, says Chris Seton, a paediatric and adolescent sleep specialist at Sydney's Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

Here's how some parents make it work — and what you can do when it's not working.

'It's great until it's not'

Sophia and her partner are both on board with co-sleeping, and they know it's not forever. But in these early years of their son's life, it's working well for them.

"[We have a] very calm bed-time routine, which is very nice. When our son's ready, he lets us know and we calmly go to bed together and he falls asleep within five, ten minutes," Sophia says.

"There's no fighting. It's just straight to bed. He's calm, he's happy and falls asleep really peacefully … we've created a really safe space, because he's never had to be separated from us, so it's … a very calm and harmonious family unit."

A few hours after her son falls asleep, Sophia returns to the same bed to sleep, and they wake up together in the morning.

Her partner usually sleeps in a separate bed as he gets up early for work.

Sophia and her partner have asked their son if he wants to sleep in his own bed. He doesn't.

"He's like, that's just crazy. So we'll just touch base with him every now and again and see when he's ready."

Dr Seaton says Sophia's four-year-old is unlikely to opt to sleep by himself any time soon.

Kids don't usually grow out of wanting to sleep with parents before they are nine, but rather in their teenage years, he says.

"It's a long haul, rather than a short haul."

And when it works as it does in Sophia's family, and everyone's getting great sleep, he says there's no issue — despite some parents worrying that co-sleeping indicates a weakness in their parenting.

"One of the common reasons why parents come to see us at the Woolcock sleep clinic is to ask if co-sleeping is OK. And we, of course, say it's OK — it's great — until it's not," Dr Seton says.

It becomes not OK at the point when parents are losing sleep — sometimes the result of sharing a bed with a child who might be a restless sleeper.

"So it can have an upside, but it can have a downside as well."

Opinions divided

Sleep is important for our physical and mental health, says Sleep Health Foundation CEO Moira Junge.

And there isn't a blanket "best" sleep arrangement.

"It's very much what's working for the family," she says.

And while SIDS is a risk associated with co-sleeping with children between one month and 12 months of age, older children are much less at risk.

They are still the subject of co-sleeping stigma, however, which stretches across ages.

"It's very polarising," Ms Junge says.

But she says there's no evidence to show that's the case.

Similarly baseless is the idea that parents who co-sleep might be damaging their child's ability to form independent sleeping habits or be resilient and soothe themselves at night.

"It's rubbish," Dr Seton says.

"Parents shouldn't be worried about that. And if you look at global statistics, more kids sleep with their parents than not."

Some research shows that around 60 per cent of infants globally, and a similar number of pre-school aged children, co-sleep with their caregivers. The figure is much lower in Western nations and is closer to 9 per cent in Australia. 

Dr Seton says, in reference to the development of older children, no nation demonstrates better or worse outcomes as a result of co-sleeping.

"There's no long-term evidence of harm either way; that is, psychological or other harm from co-sleeping or from not co-sleeping."

How to stop co-sleeping

For parents who co-sleep with their child but want to transition into separate beds, there are strategies that can help.

From age five or six years onwards, children are responsive to "reward therapy", Dr Seton says.

"So we discuss with them what it would take to get them not to sleep with their parents, and the common things that seem to work well in middle childhood — kids five to 10 years old — is money, screen time [and] gifts.

"So we work on rewards with the support of parents and in kids from age five up. It might take a month or two to do it, but it works well."

There's another strategy — that can be used in conjunction with reward therapy — that Dr Seton has helped parents use with older children.

He calls it "a win-lose contract" and it's a sort of meeting in the middle.

"We put a thin mattress on the floor in the parents' bedroom and … we say, you can come into your parents bedroom if you wake at night; you can sleep on this thin, not very comfortable mattress on the floor; but you must not wake your parents up when you come in, you come in quiet as a mouse.

"So what you're giving that child is nearness or closeness to their parents, but without the disruption of the parents' sleep," he says.

Parents who want to make co-sleeping work for them, or who are looking to transition out of co-sleeping, don't have to go it alone.

"There is help out there," Ms Junge says.