Ending the (Accidental) Family Bed We heard a heartfelt plea from Pierce Freelon last week: Night. ... Our kids have grown so dependent that they can barely drift off for an afternoon nap if one of us is not lying beside them. How, Mr. Freelon asked of parents who have BTDT (been there, done that), does one turn the family bed back into a marital bed once things are this far out of hand - and what if one partner likes all the small overnight guests, while the other longs for a return to quieter times? Because I've been there myself, I know what worked for us: the mattress-next-to-the-bed solution mentioned by jzzy55, Brynn and others. We kept an inflatable twin mattress with a rim around it that we called "the nest" under the bed for years, and briefly we had one on each side. Nightmare? Get a hug, snuggle into the nest. Loud, scary noise? Ditto. Barfed in your bed? One parent will cover the nest with a towel and get you a bucket while the other goes to collect the horrible evidence - but not to change the sheets for what, experience shows, may very well be just the first time that night. The nest is rubbery. You can barf on it again and again. We came to this solution after an experience that, for my husband, was probably a little like Mr. Freelon's (although he never set it to music). As he said, I got "the good end" of the little body snuggled into mine, while he got the bits that kicked and punched. And I found that while mine might have been the better lot in the family bed, I still wasn't getting a good night's sleep, although I didn't realize how bad it was until we put a stop to the in-bed visitations. To break the cycle, we returned the children to bed (we went through this more than once) as many times as necessary, gently, kindly (mostly) but firmly. We always made it clear that the nest was for emergencies. If a child showed signs of paying intentional visits, we took it in turns to again (and again, and again) return said child to bed. The nest eventually deflated permanently, and now visitors to our bedroom can choose between the quilt the smaller dog sleeps on, removed from under the dog and spread out on the carpet, or the dog bed used by the larger of the dogs. They (the children) say both are quite comfortable. The family bed supported (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) by Michaela, Rebekkah and other commenters simply didn't work for us. I felt, perhaps with Mr. Freelon's wife and certainly with others, like Andrew and schqc, that they wouldn't want to sleep with us for long, and that I would miss those days. While I was right in some ways, I was also missing how my own poor sleep was impacting our family life. It made sense to trade a few nighttime snuggles for what turned out to be a whole lot less daytime yelling and crankiness - from me. Here's a link to the "nest" in its current incarnation (they don't sell the same thing anymore, but this is close). What strategies best help everyone in your family to get a good night's sleep?