Your kids that is. I mean on a regular basis. Husband's kids have slept in their own rooms/beds for 4 -5 years at their mom's house and at ours. All of a sudden their mom has been doing the "family bed thing" and now step daughter sobs herself to sleep when she's with us at night because she is use to sleeping with her mother. She's 8. I'm sure her 6 year old brother will start having problems sleeping without mom too soon. So, do you or your ex do the family bed thing and if so, does it cause problems with the kids are suppose to sleep in their own beds?

I think you may be putting the cart before the horse. Difficulty sleeping is usually a symptom of some other problem, not a result of any particular sleeping arrangement. I am wondering what it is that prompted the kids to start sleeping in the family bed again. Maybe whatever is causing the girl's anxiety is also causing her problems sleeping at your house. If the kids have been sleeping in their own beds for years, I doubt that the transition to the family bed was out of the blue. I'm guessing that one or both of them is suffering from anxiety - maybe the "sleeper effect" from the divorce, maybe something else. Who knows. Seven or eight is a very common age to start worrying about death, because it is around that age that children start really comprehending that neither they nor their parents will live forever. Often that worry produces sleep problems - it did for two of my kids. Maybe the little girl is worrying, perhaps subconsciously, that something will happen to her mom while she is not there. <P>My kids all started out sleeping in a family bed (my H was very much in agreement on this when he was home). They transitioned quite easily to their own beds between 2 and 4. <P><BR>

My kids sometimes sleep in my bed..they start out in their beds...and wake up and come climb in bed w/ me...