I'm not a big fan of kids in the parent bed beyond the age of 2.

My son slept, in his crib, in our room until at least 18 months, and sometimes after the 5 a.m. feeding, he'd stay with us until time to get up, but rarely ever spent the whole night there. Literally from the day he was born he was a restless sleeper who moved all over the bed all night long - in the newborn nursery at the hospital, they couldn't keep him swaddled. A number of nurses said they'd never seen another newborn who could get himself out of the tight blanket wrap that hospitals do for newborns.

So having this thrashing machine in the middle of our bed was not a workable idea -parents have rights, too, and one of them is sleep! It's important to remember that, because if you don't get adequate rest at least several nights each week, you're not going to be able to do what your SPD child needs during the day.

However, we did have contact during the night; many times I woke up, looked over at the crib and made eye contact with my son. It seemed like that eye contact was all he needed, and almost immediately he'd fall back to sleep.

At about 2, he moved, in the crib with a crib tent, into his own room, and adapted to sleeping there fairly easily, in part because of the crib tent. He was a climber from 9 months of age, and the tent over the crib was the only way to prevent major head injury - when he climbed out of the crib, he always landed head first, so we put a stop to that real fast. The tent stayed on the crib until about age 4, when we began working toward removing it with a slow negotiation process - "You can have the tent unzipped if you stay in your room" and gradually he learned boundaries and consequences.

For the last 3 years, as his SPD problems have worsened, he sleeps with one of his cats on the bed with him, and if we travel, he sleeps poorly because he says how much he misses the cat. He needs the cat there, really needs it for security, so I think your idea of the pet on the bed is good.

But a child who so badly needs to be in her mother's bed, as you describe, may have issues far beyond what are currently being addressed. I'd be concerned about the quality of her sleep - is she getting enough deep sleep if she is constantly seeking/getting touched? That isn't consistent with deep sleep, and could lead to chronic fatigue, which may be making her overall situation worse. Has she had a thorough neurological exam?

When my son developed insomnia last summer, we started him on melatonin, have you considered using that to help your daughter transition to falling sleep in her own room?

Frankly I think your husband has right to be livid, because he has rights, too, and clearly his sleep is being compromised. Exhausted parents don't make the best decisions, either at home or at work.

"Cry it out" won't work with an SPD child, but I personally would insist the child move to her own room and stay there. I think you may need professional guidance on how to get her there, and to know that her current sleep issues aren't the result of a medical issue that is being missed.

And that brings to mind one last thought - does she have nutritional issues which may contribute to poor sleep? Several years back I basically stopped sleeping at all, not by choice. A medical work-up found that I was severely deficient of vitamin B12, which in turn lead to a diagnosis of celiac disease (gluten intolerance). Now, on a gluten-free diet and with vitamin B12 doses as prescribed by my doctor, I sleep well. If I miss a few doses of B12 in a row, it shows up as sleep problems. There are several types of nutritional problems which can have major impacts on sleep.