Ask Dr. Ada: Co-Sleeping Toddler
Dear Dr. Ada:
My 4-year-old son wants to sleep with me, bugging me night after night, and saying that he will marry me.
Do I need to worry?
Response:
There is nothing to worry about this early childhood boyish wish; it is quite common.
Hug your son and gently tell him that you love him but you also love his father, for a longer time than him (from before he was even born) and that’s why you have married him, and why you sleep with him. Explain to your son firmly that sons cannot marry their mothers and that in any case, once he becomes an adult he will find the right bride to marry and sleep with her.
You can learn more about the importance of the mother-child relationship in my book, The Drama of the Mother-Child Bond: What Every Woman Should Know about Motherhood, Career and Children available on Amazon.
Dr. Ada Anbar
Ada Anbar holds a Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education from the University at Buffalo, and, after a 40-year teaching career, is now a full-time writer.
She is passionate about children and their mothers and likes to reduce the amount of stress in their lives. She wants children to develop their best potential and mothers to have the peace of mind to achieve their best.
She works toward these goals through her books which discuss the different issues in early childhood development and the difficulties that mothers have in balancing their needs with the needs of their children.
The author of several parenting books, Dr. Anbar lives in Phoenix, Arizona close to her children and is the proud mother of two sons and grandmother of six grandchildren.
Ada’s most recent book focuses on one of the aspects at the other end of human development, dementia.
Based on her recent experience with her husband, her new book is “When Love Meets Dementia — Frontotemporal Degeneration (FTD) and the Family”.
Now available for purchase at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other fine bookstores.
