re: Parenting question - 4 year old

Had a similar issue with my son sleeping in our bed (he was around 3 or 4). We saw a child psychologist, and he recommended gradually moving him to his own room (sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag next to our bed, then farther away, etc.). But when it reached the stage of putting him in his own bed, the child psychologist said to lock our bedroom door and do not let him in - he said if we were ready to cave, we could even call him in the middle of the night and he’d talk us out of relenting.

The first night we put him in his own room and locked our door, he screamed, cried, and beat on our door until he literally had a nose bleed. We opened the door to clean him up, but then locked him out again. It worked. Within a few nights he was sleeping in his own room with no problems.