Co-sleeping offers many parents and children a loving environment that can build bonds, comfort, and trust. Sometimes parents co-sleep out of necessity when they have fussy or restless children who are only calm in bed with Mom or Dad. Other parents are using attachment parenting techniques and co-sleeping is a part of their plans. For some moms, co-sleeping offers an easy way to nurse their babies at night without disturbing others, and allowing them to get a good sleep as well. No matter what the motivation is for co-sleeping, there will come a time when this is not the preferred situation for either child or parent. Encouraging children who co-sleep to slumber in their own beds, in their own rooms, can be done several different ways.

Co-sleeping offers many parents and children a loving environment that can build bonds, comfort, and trust. Sometimes parents co-sleep out of necessity when they have fussy or restless children who are only calm in bed with Mom or Dad. Other parents are using attachment parenting techniques and co-sleeping is a part of their plans. For some moms, co-sleeping offers an easy way to nurse their babies at night without disturbing others, and allowing them to get a good sleep as well. No matter what the motivation is for co-sleeping, there will come a time when this is not the preferred situation for either child or parent. Encouraging children who co-sleep to slumber in their own beds, in their own rooms, can be done several different ways.

Important factors to remember when transitioning co-sleeping children to independently sleeping children are time and patience. Children do not learn how to co-sleep in one night, and it will take at time to adjust to a new night time sleeping habit, especially if it is the only style the child has ever know. Adjusting these sleeping patterns can take weeks or months, and patience will be needed to reach the goal. Parents will sometimes choose to wait until their child has fallen asleep with them, and then move them to their own bedrooms. For children who sleep soundly, this might work, but it can also lead to interrupted sleep hours for both parents and children.

Small steps that help transition the change might offer parents the most success, including bringing the child's crib into the parent's room, or even placing a sleeping blanket on the floor next to the adult bed. The child doesn't even need to sleep there at first, but instead be shown that when they do it is a safe place close to Mom or Dad. Some children will prefer to nap in their own beds at first, as daytime can be a safer time for some kids not to co-sleep if the fear of the dark is a contributing factor for co-sleeping. The parents can gradually move their child from daytime naps in their own beds to nighttime slumber.

Parents can use other techniques to make independent sleeping a comforting choice for children. This might be using a special nightlight for the child, reading extra bedtime stories together, or finding a stuffed animal that comforts the child and can give them something to snuggle when Mom and Dad aren't at hand. It is also important to establish routines, and encouraging children to move away from co-sleeping and into independent sleeping should be done with positive, comforting, safe, and consistent methods. Even just taking an extra 30 minutes reading to the child at bedtime can help to calm the child and make the bedroom feel like a safe, warm place to be.

Those children who are very reluctant to sleep independently might be more inclined to do so if there are incentives. These can be as small as getting to choose a favorite treat in the morning after independently sleeping, or perhaps giving older children who have slept independently for several nights in a row a larger reward such as new nightlight, bedtime book, or an outing for breakfast on the weekend.

It is important for parents to emphasize through this process that the child is not being punished or is unwanted. Instead, the child is growing and becoming such a wonderful little human being that he or she needs to have their own special place to get enough rest to become even stronger. Parents need to focus on the long term goals, have patience, and be consistent and firm, and soon they and their children will have pleasant dreams.