![\"Andy](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/New-Bio-Photo-Andy-Hinds-Aug-2012-web-291x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Oh my God\u2013did you see how they chase that kid all over the house trying to feed her?<\/i><\/p>\n
Well of course he\u2019s a little tyrant\u2013they cave in to his every demand.<\/i><\/p>\n
No way I\u2019m gonna make special meals for a picky kid\u2013my kids will eat what\u2019s on their plate or they won\u2019t eat.<\/i><\/p>\n
She\u2019s almost 3… and still in diapers? Aw, hell no.<\/i><\/p>\n
I\u2019ve made variations of these and more, either to myself or my wife, and then later engaged in the same behavior I was judging in other parents.<\/p>\n
One of these chickens that came home to roost was caused by the attitude I had developed toward some of my progressive parent friends who felt it was important for babies to sleep in the same beds with their parents.<\/p>\n
I actually started out neutral on the idea of co-sleeping. It seemed like an OK idea in the abstract, before I really thought it through. But because we have twins, it was never really practical. My wife and I already have border disputes in our queen bed; how horrible would the tussling become with two babies in there too?<\/p>\n
So we had the kids in their own cribs right from the beginning. Well they weren\u2019t actually cribs, truth be told. We had them in Pack \u2019n Plays in our walk-in closet (but only for the first three years) because it was easier to deal with their nighttime shenanigans when they were near. Once they got too big, we moved them downstairs into actual cribs that had been sitting there, mostly unused, for their early lives.<\/p>\n
The kids have always been pretty good sleepers, and we gloated a little when we thought about our friends who had to share their beds with their older kids because of the precedent set when they were babies.<\/p>\n
What kind of suckers would let themselves get into a situation where they had to go to bed every time their kid was tired? And what was the exit strategy? How long would these parents be prisoners of their kids\u2019 sleep habits? What about their sex lives, not to mention the discomfort and disruptions of having children in bed with them?<\/i><\/p>\n
Yep, we had it all figured out.<\/p>\n
Finally, almost a year ago, we inherited big-kid beds from relatives. The girls were very excited to \u201chelp\u201d set up the frames, emptying out the baggies of hardware and climbing on the pieces as I bolted the contraptions together.<\/p>\n
After only a little bit of muttered swearing, I got the beds set up and repositioned the mesh canopies that had previously been draped over the cribs. The girls were excited to sleep in their new big-kid beds.<\/p>\n
That is, until that night, when we tried to tuck them in. They immediately started crying for their cribs.<\/p>\n
We tried to be tough, we really did. \u201cMonkeys,\u201d we said, \u201cwe asked if you were ready for the big-kid beds and you said you were. We can\u2019t bring the cribs back; you just have to get used to sleeping in big-kid beds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then we tried to show them how awesome the new beds were, as well as the new comforters and pillows we had gotten them. They just kept crying.<\/p>\n
Their pleading eventually changed from \u201ccrib, crib, crib\u201d to \u201csleep with me, Daddy\u201d and \u201csleep with me, Mommy.\u201d<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing since last December. Every night \u2013 except when we do grownup stuff and the babysitter puts them down with no trouble, of course \u2013 the girls kind of fake whine, \u201cSleep with me,\u201d and my wife and I kind of fake-protest that we shouldn\u2019t have to lie down with these big 4-year-olds when it\u2019s time for bed.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my shameful secret, though. It\u2019s really not so bad.<\/p>\n
I snuggle up with one kid and my wife snuggles up with the other, and we whisper and giggle for a while, and then pretty soon Mom and Dad are sawing logs. I wake up about an hour later, to the rancid dog breath in my face that lets me know our dog Stella wants to go for her nightly walk.<\/p>\n
I might wake my wife, or I might wait until Stella and I return. After our evening naps and my dog walk, my wife and I goof around until the wee hours, at which point we say, \u201cWhy are we still up? These after-dinner naps are killing us.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then the next night, around 8:30 or so \u2013 after bath time and tooth brushing, and reading a half dozen books in the dim light of the lamp on the kids\u2019 dresser \u2013 we stretch and yawn and empty our pockets onto the floor by the bed and say, \u201cThis is ridiculous. We have to stop lying down with these kids. We just can\u2019t \u2013 YAWN \u2013 continue like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s always a reason that it\u2019s a bad time to stop. The kids are kind of sick. They\u2019re messed up from being on Eastern time at their grandparents\u2019 house. They had a stressful day.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re just not quite ready.<\/p>\n
\u2014Andy Hinds es un padre que se queda en casa, bloguero, escritor independiente, carpintero y, a veces, profesor adjunto de escritura. Es conocido en Internet como Beta Dad, pero es posible que lo conozcas como ese tipo en North Park cuyos hijos viajan en un carro tirado por perros. Lea su blog personal en betadadblog.com<\/a>. Comun\u00edquese con \u00e9l en betadad@gmail.com o @betadad en Twitter.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andy Hinds | Parenting Being human makes you very likely to be guilty of hypocrisy. Being a parent makes it inevitable.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1274,"featured_media":246563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Co-sleeping is for suckers","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}