Musical beds

The last few nights Henry has ended up in our bed. He claims that he “saw a REALLY scary episode of Jimmy Neutron where there was a VERY scary monkey.” Um, whaaat? Although now that I think about it, Henry does have a track record of being scared and fascinated with monkeys. That monkey in Toy Story 3 that claps his symbols together in the secret camera room resulted in avoidance of all things monkey around here for quite some time.

Anyway, with the fear of monkeys recurring for Henry and George having some trouble sleeping as well, nights at our house have turned into a veritable game of musical beds. Henry comes into our room, climbs in, and then Mike climbs out. Mike goes into Henry’s room to sleep, then George wakes up, he comes into our room, I walk him back to his room, and then he calls out for Mike, who ends up coming out of Henry’s room and finishing out the night in George’s room. Meanwhile Henry and I finish out the night in my bed, where he manages to sleep in (whoo hoo!) but I get kicked in the gut all night long because despite having a king-size bed Henry feels the need to sleep RIGHT next to me (boo!). UGH.

And the weird thing is that I feel conflicted about all of this bed-sharing. On one hand, I like to sleep by myself and without a 6 year old two inches away from me or a 3 year old trying to pry my eyelids open at 2am while saying, “Mommy, are you awake? Mommy? Mommy? OPEN YOUR EYES MOMMY!” Plus, I am not one of the co-sleeping advocates. We’ve always been of the everyone-sleeps-better-in-his-or-her-own-bed philosophy. Because it’s hard to end it when it starts. And really, I like my sleep. A lot.

But then part of me is happy that Henry wants to sleep with us, that he still is a little boy that needs to snuggle and be protected, because I know that this will all come to an end much too soon. I like that he’s my little boy and he needs his mother, that when scary monkeys come calling Mommy is the one that can make it all better. For right now, when he’s 6, I can make things better just by being there and letting him sleep next to me. That’s it. It’s a relatively easy thing to do. But at some point in time and at a certain age, a kid that wants to sleep with mom and dad every night strikes me as creepy and unhealthy. And isn’t that the way it always is with parenting? The delicate balance between keeping our kids little and innocent and helping them grow into independent, functioning members of society. Too much coddling and you aren’t doing the kid or yourself any favors when you have a 25-year-old-man-child. Too little love and support and I think we’ve all seen enough Oprah to know where that can lead.

So I know that the musical beds must stop. I’ll let Henry snuggle in for a few more nights, but then we’ll all need to go back to sleeping in our rightful places. Because like one of my favorite writers (Ayelet Waldman) says, sometimes you have to let go of the parent you want to be and the parent your child wants you to be and become the parent that your child needs you to be. And those can be very different indeed.