Does your toddler wake excessively at night because of bedsharing?
Sharing the bed with your toddler doesn't cause excessive night waking
Bedsharing doesn't cause excessive night waking in toddlers. If your toddler is waking excessively at nights, his disrupted sleep pattern is typically due to the settings on his body clock, which are out of sync with yours, and with day and night.
You can find out about causes of excessive night waking in toddlers here. In this situation, your little one's body clock requires a reset.
Is it possible that a bedsharing toddler wakes more often than a toddler who isn't bedsharing, though this remains in the spectrum of normal toddler night waking? The evidence is not clear. You might find it easier to deal with your toddler's normal night waking by sharing the bed. Or bedsharing may not suit your family at all! Only you know what's right for your own unique family situation.
The main thing is to avoid repeated toddler sleep battles! A pattern of stress and distress about sleep is not good for your family.
Why do parents bedshare?
Bedsharing in early childhood remains a common practice in both Western and non-Western countries. There are many cultures in which most parents continue to share their bed with small children.
From an evolutionary perspective, humans have always slept with their toddler close to their bodies, often but not always the breastfeeding mother's body, because this keeps the dial on the toddler's sympathetic nervous system dialled down in the night. Sleeping close to a parent's body in the night makes responding to your toddler easy. Sleeping close to the mother's body makes breastfeeding easy.
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You can find out about transitioning a toddler out of your bed, if you're ready to do this, here.
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You can find out about protecting your little one's sleep throughout childhood here.
Selected references
Akacem LD, Simpkin CT, Carskadon MA, Wright KP, Jenni OG, Achermann P, et al. The timing of the circadian clock and sleep differ between napping and non-napping toddlers. Plos One. 2015;10(4):e0125181.
Mason GM, Holmes JF, Andre C, Spencer RMC. Bedsharing in early childhood: frequency, partner characteristics, and relations to sleep. Journal of Genetic Psychology. 2021;182(4):269-288.
Mindell JA, Sadeh A, Kwon R, Goh DYT. Cross-cultural differences in the sleep of preschool children. Sleep Medicine. 2013;14(12):1283-1289.
Thorpe K, Staton S, Sawyer E, Pattinson C, Haden C, Smith S. Napping, development and health from 0 to 5 years: a systematic review. BMJ. 2015;100:615-622.
