The Healthy Parenting Blog

Children ’should sleep with parents until they’re five’
Sian Griffiths

ONE of Britain’s leading experts on children’s mental health has advised parents to reject years of convention and allow children to sleep in bed with them until the age of five.

Margot Sunderland, director of education at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London, says the practice, known as “co-sleeping”, makes children more likely to grow up as calm, healthy adults.

Sunderland, author of 20 books, outlines her advice in The Science of Parenting, to be published later this month.

She is so sure of the findings in the new book, based on 800 scientific studies, that she is calling for health visitors to be issued with fact sheets to educate parents about co-sleeping.

“These studies should be widely disseminated to parents,” said Sunderland. “I am sympathetic to parenting gurus — why should they know the science? Ninety per cent of it is so new they bloody well need to know it now. There is absolutely no study saying it is good to let your child cry.”

Read the article in its entirety;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2179265_1,00.html