daughter sleeping with mom

[yourferna]

My daughter is 8 years old. Im divorced.She has always slept with me. She had a friend spend the night and when it got close to bed time she started crying cause she wanted to sleep with me and not her friend. So we called the friends mother and took her home. I have never remarried so never thought of it as a problem but now I see that it is a problem for my daughter. Im not the type of mom to make her go to her bed and cry like that. Is there any suggestions On how I can start helping her to want to sleep in her own bed?

[SL345]

You have to change your thinking about this. She may not want to sleep in her own bed. There are a lot of things our kids don't want to do (and for that matter that I didn't want to do) that they have to do. You and she need to work on this. What happened with her friend showed that to both of you. However, there are probably lots of small ways in which sleeping in bed with you nightly (and other things that may be going on daily) may be contributing to her being more dependent. Tell her that you realized when her friend slept over that you have not been doing her any favors by allowing her to sleep with you every night. It is time that she begin to work on this. Develop a nice bedtime ritual with her in which you put her to bed in her room, with some nice cuddling time, and then in small increments move from her bedside to the floor to the doorway over severla days, weeks or months - whatever it takes.