Teaching Your Child Independence
© Susan Todd-Raque
A normal part of growing up is learning to cope with anxiety. In fact, a very important stage of development children go through around the time they start kindergarten is called separation anxiety. Often it starts then, but I have seen many children over the years for whom this anxiety can pop back up, even when they are ten years old.
I remember when I went to kindergarten one day, I cried for my mom to come get me. Fortunately for me, she was not home, and I had to stay. Had she been home, she would have assured me everything was okay and she would see me when she came to pick me up after school. She would have set a boundary and I knew she would not budge. Believe it or not, my mom’s boundaries gave me strength of character and it gave me confidence that I could handle my own problems when I had to.
Many children, from toddler to even sometimes up to twelve, want their parents to soothe their anxieties by allowing them to sleep in their parents’ bed. I have had this situation come up at least 3-4 times a year. What are the reasons why this is such a big issue for some children, yet not for other children? Don’t all children have anxiety?
There are many reasons why children want to sleep in their parents’ bed. One reason is because children who generally want this are children who struggle a little more than the average child with worry, do not like being alone, have trouble self-soothing and their parents do everything for them. All children have anxiety, some more than others. But the worse thing a parent can do for their child is to enable their child’s worries by giving in. Parents who insist on their children sleeping in their own bed are teaching their children independence, conquering their fear of being alone, and learning to self-soothe, all at the same time.
In next week’s column I will give more information for parents who say “it’s impossible, s/he won’t sleep, they will refuse and then we won’t get any sleep” or “we can’t do anything because s/he sneaks in the middle of the night”. I will also address other aspects that may play into why parents permit this dependency, such as sometimes it is the parents’ anxieties.
