What do I do if my child resists leaving co-sleeping?
There are a couple of approaches you can do. You can do it gradually or you can do it a little bit more abruptly. For instance, you can say, “Well, you know, Johnny, Mommy will sit with you, she won't lie with you in your bed, but she'll sit in the room next to your bed while you fall asleep.” You can do that and gradually, you can move you chair further and further away. Or, you can do it more abruptly, and say, “You're a big boy. Goodnight”, and turn off the lights, or maybe leave a nightlight on if that's what the child wants, and then leave the room. Now, the child may protest, and in that situation, you're going to – that's where we start our, sort of, sleep training. The sleep training technique really applies to whether it's a small baby or an older child. Now, getting back to this three year old and up, they might start saying, you know their imaginations are very, very vivid at that point, and you know, afraid of the dark and afraid of monsters is a big deal. And, to avert that, you can also do – you can also give the child control over the monsters, too. One of the things is that you can create monster spray. You know, during the daytime, you can get one of these little bottles that you can put water in – and you concoct it, you can put water in, you can put color in, or something, obviously, that's safe, perfume, and get the child involved in creating this monster spray. Or, you can get a recipe that you've created – a monster spray recipe – and get the child involved with you to make monster spray. Then, before you go to sleep at night, you know, he sprays the monster spray, and that deals with the monsters, because monster spray is actually very long acting. It actually works the whole night, and in fact, goes right into some part of the day, too. It's very powerful stuff. Monsters don't dare come into a room where there's been monster spray. That's kind of like a little example of how you can give kids control over their fear of the dark or their fear of the monsters.
