By age 7 or 8, most boys should be able to fall asleep alone. If a son still requires mom’s body to fall asleep, he fails to develop self-soothing mechanisms. This can manifest as panic attacks at sleepovers, inability to nap at school, or extreme anxiety during overnight camps.
If you have a partner, ensure that bed-sharing does not completely eliminate intimacy or communication time with your spouse. When is it Time to Transition? mom and son share a bed
: A parent might start by sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the child's room, gradually moving further away until the child is comfortable sleeping alone. By age 7 or 8, most boys should be able to fall asleep alone
Maintain the same soothing pre-sleep rituals—such as reading a book together or talking about their day—but move the final step of falling asleep into his own bed. If you have a partner, ensure that bed-sharing
If the mother has a partner, a child in the bed creates physical and emotional distance, often straining the adult relationship.
Before judging the dynamic, we must understand the "why." A mom and son rarely end up sharing a bed by accident in Western cultures; it is usually driven by necessity or specific parenting philosophies.
