My 4 year old brother still sleeps with my parents?

He still sleeps with my parents and it dirves me insane. The reason i get mad is I think he is old enought on his own and he has developed a thing where he can only get to sleep when someone sleeps with him, so my parents have to go up and rest with him until he falls asleep. They wont listen to me but its really a nuisense. After all, he has his own room and bed which is perfect, nothing is wrong with it at all, how can I tell my parents he needs to sleep in his won bed?

Answers:
One of these days either he'll grow out of his "issue" with getting to sleep (many, many, kids his age have this kind of thing). Another thing is one of these days your parents may find some way to change what's going on once they feel he has to sleep in his own bed. You don't know what it is like to have a four-year-old.

With all due respect, trust that your parents know what they're doing and that this is between them and their child - and it isn't your concern. When you have your own children then you can do things the way you think they should be done. Your parents obviously don't see this as a big deal, and neither do a whole lot of other people with four-year-olds. Somehow, nobody ends up sleeping with their parents when they're grown.

You need to ask yourself why you are so worried about this.

People who are willing to rest with children before they go to sleep often believe that if a child is going through the phase where they're a little restless or a little afraid of things they think up as they try to sleep that child needs to know that his parents are willling to try to make him feel more comfortable. If they turn their back on any fears or other discomfort he has now - when he's so little - then the message they will send him is that they will not be there for him now, when he's thirteen, when he's sixteen, etc. He will learn that when he was afraid or lonely or whatever it is that makes him need them right now they weren't there for him.

No decent parent wants to send that message. If your parents have a problem with this they'll figure out what to do about it. Otherwise, obviously, they're fine with it.

Of course, they aren't going to listen to you. That is not your child. You have no experience with children. You are young. Obviously, too, you are someone who believes you know more than your parents do (and a lot of young people think that), the someday when you're a parent you'll see that when you were young you didn't know as much as you thought you did.

(Do you think your parents don't have as the ultimate aim his sleeping in his own bed by himself? Of course they do. Relax and take care of your own issues and problems. They'll take care of theirs.)

Just tell them they should understand

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My 4 year old brother still sleeps with my parents?

Pregnancy & Parenting