Shall we all be running while you have your radio dial up because I Hello out there and welcome to because I said so the only parenting podcast on the entire worldwide web that's worth listening to, as you will no doubt soon discover. I'm your host renegade psychologist John Rosemond, whose licensing board wishes I'd be abducted by aliens. For more on me and my mission slash ministry to America's beleaguered parents. My websites are at parent guru.com and John rosemond.com. When I was a child, the thought of sleeping with my parents never occurred to me. Never being vaporized by a Russian hydrogen bomb was more likely than sleeping with my parents. Like every other kid I knew. Back then, in the halcyon days of the 1950s. I slept in my own bed and my own room which was my imagination chamber. My parents bade me good night and turned out delight as they left thus abandoned and clinically depressed. I'm kidding, of course. I was usually asleep within minutes. That was the 1950s when putting a child to bed was a simple straightforward affair. And 1976 All that changed with the first publication of a book titled The Family bed by Minnesota housewife Tyne seven out of the thin air of her own experience. Seven imprint proposed sleeping alone caused children numerous psychological problems. They felt isolated, they felt unwanted, they felt unloved. They developed separation anxieties, and the monsters they imagined under their beds and in their closets. Were symbols of their feelings of vulnerability and abandonment. Seven and made it sound as if children who slept in their own beds were destined to become mass murderers are lifetime occupants of rubber rooms and medieval insane asylums are both. After all, Lizzie Borden didn't sleep with her parents, and neither did Hitler Ernest Hemingway and there you have it. For odd reasons, the family bed caught on and America's mother culture and co sleeping as it became known, became synonymous with good mothering. I say good mothering because I've never met a father who wants his kids sleeping with him and his wife, or I should say ex wife, because the minute a married couple allows a child in their bed on a regular basis, nightly basis. Our marriage is over. Mind you, the two people in question. Male and female may continue to live together and even refer to one another is my husband and my wife. But let's face it, folks. If a child is in your bed, on a nightly basis, the marriage is over. And authentic, as opposed to make believe marriage is two people. Two people and two people only one biological male, one biological female when a male and female who are married invite their children into the marital bed. The marriage is no longer authentic. It's a threesome. Or a foursome. Sometimes heaven forbid it's even a more some. To give an example my M Bialik, who is now one of the hosts of televisions Jeopardy, which can't seem to get its act together. Bialik became an outspoken advocate for cosleeping winner children were young she claimed in interviews that the family bed had not interfered in the least with her marriage, and that her husband was all for it. They subsequently divorced. Maybe they divorced for reasons having nothing to do with the fact that she insisted upon co sleeping with her kids. But the facts are a miam Bialik insists that upon co sleeping and became a spokesperson for the practice and B, she and her husband got a divorce. Over the years I've talked with a number of men who report that cosleeping was a major factor in their divorce. I've even talked with women who admit that letting your child or children sleep in the marital bed was the worst decision they've ever made. That it led to their divorce. Hindsight is 2020 as they say. How did something so obviously unnecessary, and even bizarre become so popular? Well, I identify four primary reasons. First, promoters of the family beds scared mothers, with completely invented psychological boogie men. Sad promoters including time seven and claimed that sleeping alone caused children all manner of emotional problems, mind you. There is no body of research that supports the contentions of family bed advocates. Researchers have found in fact that kids who co sleep have on average, no fewer and no more problems as young adults than kids who sleep by themselves. In other words, when co sleepers and non co sleepers are in their early 20s. psychological tests can't tell them apart. The question then becomes of co sleeping imparts no benefit to the child in question. Why co sleep? That question leads us into the next reason such a completely unnecessary and strange practice became so popular. Second reason once a new bow parenting practice attains a certain level of popularity and especially when celebrity moms and Dorset women begin jumping on the bandwagon without really thinking it through. It's the lemming effect. Or as it was once expressed. If all your friends jump off a cliff, are you going to follow the follow them? Unfortunately, there's a whole lot of American mothers and these upside down days her jumping off the cliff the latest dumb parenting thing. Because the latest Dum parenting thing in this case cosleeping of the family bed has become popular and Mother culture. Third, promoters of the family bed twisted and omitted facts very conveniently. So they claimed that humans in a primitive state they used Amazonian tribes, as a specific, specific example. Always co slept which is mostly true. What they left out, however, was the fact that as soon as the primitive peoples in question emerge from the Stone Age, and begin living and houses with four walls and a roof, the houses in question features separate bedrooms for the children. In other words, co sleeping is only quote natural and quote when there is no alternative. Like when the entire family is living in a teepee out on the plains of the 19th century American West. A fourth because the promoters of the family bed promised children who felt better. And post 1960s Parenting is all about a child's feelings. And women are much much more feeling oriented than men. This propaganda appealed to women. The question becomes how has this family bed thing happened in such a short period of time? Willie and I my wife and I and no I'm not married to a guy named Willie. I'm married to a woman named Wilma but because of the Flintstones, I decided to rename her Willie and it's stuck. Willie and I have never run across anyone our age or there abouts who slept with their parents. And people in our generation did not let our kids sleep with us. And yet 1000s and 1000s of the baby boomer generations kids are allowing their kids to sleep with them. This has happened because of attachment parenting propaganda. In this case, the propaganda says and it comes from People with impressive capital letters have their names like pediatrician, Dr. William Sears. Does it come as any surprise that Sears, who is the figurehead of the Attachment Parenting movement lives in California, the state that seems to consistently give rise to one bizarre fad after another. So Dr. Sears and other spokes people in this movement began about 40 or so years ago, telling people that kids wouldn't bond that was the word they used. Kids wouldn't bond properly. Without Attachment Parenting, which included the requirement if you really want to bond everybody in the family must sleep in the same bed. I guess if the bed isn't big enough, you get rid of the bed and you all sleep on the floor. I mean, the most bizarre thing I could think of as a kid was sleeping with my parents, but we're talking California here. So very quickly. All over the USA moms who were too big to fail, began sleeping with her kids, the dads I talked to most of them go along with it because their wives, women now being the head of the household, and even most two parent households insist upon it in the men just cave in. All right deer has become the stock mantra of the American weenie husband. Have I mentioned that men are becoming wimps and that many of these whip guys do chess bumps with one another when their teams win, and drink a lot of beer and burp a lot. And otherwise I click they think men should act which is which isn't like men should act at all. But I digress. Back to attachment parenting in the family bed once again, what we have here is people with impressive capital letters after their names like pediatrician, Dr. William Sears, M D. Giving stupid advice that causes nothing but problems for people. So whether you're a single parent or a married with children, parent, how do you get a child or children out of your bed when they've been sleeping with you for years? Maybe you're ready? Because I have the answer to that question. How do you get children out of your bed when they've been sleeping with you for years, maybe lock your door. Now the first night that you lock the kids out of your room, make sure you don't have any responsibilities like having to go to work the next day. Because this should come as no surprise, you are not going to get much if any sleep. The first night you lock the child or children in question out of your room, they will probably act like they're going to become lifetime tenants to the loony bin. It will surely be the most horrifying night of your life. But you being an adult, you can do this. This lock them out. And when they come to your room and discover that the doors lock can begin screaming for you to open it weeping pitilessly for you to open it. And then being completely silent to make you think they've killed themselves because you lock your door or just say through the door. I talked with a doctor today kids. He's a very famous doctor, in fact, and I paid a lot of money to talk to him and he told me, We can't let you sleep with us ever again. So go sleep in your own bed or scream all night long. If that's what you need to do to discover that we're not going to let you into our bed again. We're going to do what the doctor told us to do. So a couple in Utah recently did exactly that with her 13 year old daughter who'd been co sleeping with them for years. When Sid daughter discovered that her parents bedroom door was locked she first tried to beat it down. While acting completely insane took about a week for the screaming to stop and for her to begin sleeping in her own bed with another couple who had two kids ages nine and six. That took one night. It was a horrible night for all concerned but it only took one night. The children in question banged and screamed and wept. wailed until three o'clock in the morning and then everything went quiet for about five minutes, during which the parents heard the kids whispering to one another on the other side of their lock door. And finally the nine year old girl said, Mom, Dad, we're going back to our beds now. But we'll be back act tomorrow night. Despite the threat that kids slept in their own beds from that night on, folks, beginning in the 1960s, the late 1960s To be specific people with capital letters after their names have come up with one ding dong parenting idea after another. Not a one of these ding dong ideas has been confirmed by dispassionate research, much less improve the lots of parents or children. Since these dingdong, ideas began to proliferate, raising a child who adulthood has gone from being a relatively simple and straightforward affair to being a huge mind bending hassle, stressful anxiety, arousing guilt producing, like Sean Hannity keeps on saying bless his patriotic heart. Parenting is the hardest thing you'll ever do. No, it is and Shawn unless you do it the new way. The way most people have been doing it since the 1960s. And as for the effect of the dingdong ideas on kids, the mental health of children over the same 50 years span has gone down the toilet. So concerning My advice to lock children out of your bedroom, if that's what it takes to get them out of your bed, let me assure you that 99.99% of psychologists my colleagues, when they hear that are going to start howling and protest claiming that I am the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper or Attila the Hun or something like that. Well, let me assure you if 99 point 99% of psychologists disagree with me, which they do, by the way on most things, that I must be right. Before I leave you today, I'm ethically bound to tell you the listener that my wife and I sleep with our 20 month old eight pound all white cute as a button toy Schnauzer, Hannah, when our kids found out we sleep with Hannah. They pointed out that we never let them sleep with us who which I said We aren't trying to get Hannah to move out. So that wraps another exciting informative and sometimes hopefully humorous episode because I said so. The podcast that strives to make childbearing simple again, I'm glad you join me and hope you enjoyed it. Remember, you can find and subscribe to my equally airy you dite substack@substack.com See you next week. Meanwhile, keep on rockin in the free world radio goes out
