Teenage girl sharing a bed with her father
My beau (divorced) has his 14 yr old daughter 50% of the time. When his daughter is with him she sleeps with him in his bed (and the family dog.) She has her own room. She also spends most of her "down time" in his bed (I.e. Reading, watching netflix, napping, texting friends.)
The house is large with plenty of room for everyone.
I don't think there is anything inappropriate going on but I also feel this is a bit unusual and wonder what others think.
ps when I stay over she sleeps in her own bed. We have a good relationship and are fairly close. The whole family is very very close and connected in a way that is foreign to me so maybe this is just an extension of this?
thank you in advance for any words of wisdom and gentle advice
Dec 15, 2016
Parent Replies
sounds like it's working fine, and who cares if it's unusual? Divorce is hard on kids and it can be very hard to maintain the closeness they felt when both parents lived in their home. If you don't think anything inappropriate is going on -- and I am usually the first to raise eyebrows -- then please just drop back and stop judging.
My ex and I separated almost 6 years ago, and our son is now 11. Whichever parent he's with, he typically sleeps with. He also has his own room in both houses and enjoys spending time in there, has kid sleepovers there, and once in a long while sleeps there - always if either of us has a significant other over. He also loves to just hang out and read in the big beds of his parents.
There is definitely nothing dicey going on. But divorce is very hard on everyone - the split was brutal and there's still a lot of pain and loneliness on everyone's part. Our son has a lot of behind the scenes sadness and one way we try to support him is to show him extra love, in many ways including cuddling him to us at night. He does not have the inner peace and sense of safety that his friends from intact families have. He never will. We all do what we can to surround him with love.
This includes doing family dinners, family events at the holidays and other little traditions that give all of us a sense of having a true family life. This doesn't mean his dad and I aren't truly separated- we are. We do not want to be together. But our child needs a family and we're able to be good friends and co parent closely, so we do.
I expect that your post will elicit a wide rage of responses (and I will be curious to see the responses). Bed-sharing, while still somewhat uncommon in mainstream US families, is not at all unusual in other cultures and increasingly common in the US. I think there is still enough stigma around kids sharing beds with parents (esp older kids) that we don't hear it talked about publicly, but I hear about it from friends with whom I am close enough to hear "confessions" (and in none of these cases is it at all sexual or inappropriate in any way shape or form, though I'm sure some will argue that it is "inappropriate" because of boundaries etc etc). In my personal experience, it is very common with younger kids and includes some older kids, especially when something disruptive has happened that has sent kids back to their parents beds (a reason for fright or insecurity). I suspect (with no research to back it up) that in families where parents are working and out of the house, nighttime is one of the few times we have together and that this reality has relaxed the boundary between bedrooms.
But it retains a certain taboo in mainstream US culture, which is why people don't talk about it much.
If you want to read something that explores the cultural basis of co-sleeping, check out this article. It is extremely interesting, though doesn't necessarily address your situation. The one thing you CAN take from the article, however, is that our panic that a teen in bed with a parent necessarily leads to or means something sexual has a great deal to do with our own cultural assumptions.
https://humdev.uchicago.edu/sites/humdev.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shw…