Children's Bed News

Co-sleeping is ''major issue among kids and parents''

Cameron and Vanessa Mathison are a couple who have spoken of their struggle to put an end to familial co-sleeping: when children prefer to sleep in their parents'' bed.

Discussing the issue with ABC News, the pair explained that they often called for their children to go to bed and assumed they would sleep in their own beds.

However, the beds remained empty and instead, the kids are happily sleeping on their parents'' bed.

The Mathisons told the news provider that they even tried to use one of father Cameron''s T-shirts as a pillowcase so that the bed would smell similar to him. Cameron said: "This is one of the ways we try and get him [Cameron''s son Lucas] to stay in his bed and sleep there.

"It worked for a little while, but not anymore."

Family sleep therapist Jennifer Waldburger of Sleepy Planet told Good Morning America on ABC: "It''s incredibly common. So many families struggle with this and it''s kind of one of those really well-kept secrets nobody talks about."

Recently, US News revealed research published in journal Pediatrics by Victor Strasburger, a professor of paediatrics at the University of New Mexico, who said that young children with TVs in their bedrooms must have them taken away due to their involvement with media throughout the day.

Posted by Michael Ewing