Appropriateness of "putting my child down to sleep"

I was telling a friend of mine that I was getting my child ready to go to sleep when I heard an audible gasp.

I was told that "putting my child down to sleep" is a phrase used in connection when euthanizing pets.

What is the proper was of saying that you are getting your child to sleep?

Putting your child to sleep is perfectly acceptable.

What your friend has gasped at is the use of the term "putting down" which means the euthanising of pets. "Putting to sleep" can also mean to euthanise but, in my experience, carries less of that connotation than "putting down".

If you do want to use the word down, you could say "laying my child down to sleep".

If you want to avoid the whole "putting to sleep" ambiguity altogether, you could say "putting my child to bed".

The whole idea of a euphemism is that you are replacing a description of something unpleasant with a description of something harmless. I think almost any phrase used as a euphemism is ambiguous in the sense that, if taken out of context, one could not be sure if it was being used literally or as a euphemism.

Think of other euphemisms. For example, we sometimes say a person "bought the farm" meaning that he died. But if you told me, "My brother always wanted to move to the country, and yesterday he finally bought the farm," I think I'd take it that you meant that he literally purchased a place for growing crops. We say two people "slept together" as a euphemism for having sexual relations. But if a mother says, "The baby has been sick so last night I slept with him to keep him quiet", I don't think I'd interpret that sexually. Etc etc.

I recall when I was a little boy we went on a family vacation and my father said that he was going to "see a man about a horse". I was all excited that we were going to go horseback riding ... until my mother explained that this was a euphemism for using a toilet.