Meet the co-sleeping family who all share a bedroom – and even let their 12-year-old daughter snuggle in with them.<br /><br />Meagan Deal, 31, and her husband Brandon, 32, have been letting their daughters share their bed since they were babies.<br /><br />Their eldest Mckenzie, 12, has always struggled getting to sleep and stayed in the couple’s king sized bed until she was 10.<br /><br />Now she has her own bed at the foot of her parents but youngest Sarah Grace, six, still curls up in between them.<br /><br />Meagan and Brandon say it’s left up to their daughters to decide when they want to sleep in their own room despite some people describing it as 'toxic'.<br /><br />Stay-at-home mum Meagan, from Montgomery, Alabama, USA, said: “Mckenzie was really tiny.<br /><br />“We had a really hard time with her sleeping by herself. She stayed in our bed and just never got out of it.<br /><br />“She has tried her own bedroom but never makes it through the night.”<br /><br />Meagan first decided to try co-sleeping with Mckenzie when she was a baby to help her to drop off.<br /><br />She then lost her hearing aged six and felt “scared” to go to sleep in her own room as she couldn’t see or hear her parents.<br /><br />Meagan added: “It’s a comfort to have us right there with her. We would sing and she’d feel our throats.<br /><br />“With Sarah Grace – she was an active baby. To get her to sleep I’d have to nurse her. She’s still in our bed.”<br /><br />Mckenzie started sleeping in her own bed aged 10 but remained in her parents room.<br /><br />Meagan said: “She was getting bigger and everybody was starting to get less sleep.<br /><br />“I was pregnant with James Mitchell, who was stillborn, and I was talking to her saying we were about to have a baby - and less space.<br /><br />"At first she just lay there but wouldn't sleep on it. However by the age of 10 she started sleeping in her bed."<br /><br />Meagan and Brandon set a strict bed time to make sure they get time as a couple when the girls are asleep.<br /><br />Megan said: “8pm is bed time [for the children].We go to bed at 10.30pm or 11pm.<br /><br />“With co-sleeping we make alone time a priority.”<br /><br />Brandon, who works in fire protection systems, added: “People ask ‘how do you get alone time?’<br /><br />“It’s important as a couple to have alone time. We watch TV, we stay up and talk. We get to have some childless time.”<br /><br />“They say ‘it’s toxic for your children’. But I knew a lot of friends growing up who used to sleep in their parents bed. <br /><br />"It's more of a foreign conversation in Northern America."<br /><br />Both girls have a shared room they can sleep in, but currently choose not to.<br /><br />The couple believe eventually their children will move out and into their own room.<br /><br />Meagan said: “Mckenzie is getting close to having her own room. She’s extremely independent.”<br /><br />Brandon added: “We wouldn’t be sad if they wanted to sleep in their own room. It’s up to them.”
