When I was a child, we were only allowed to wake the parents in cases of extreme weather, suspected haunting by ghosts, or extreme physical distress. Otherwise, their bedroom was off limits. This rule was instituted following my discovery of the "massager" I'd found in my parent's nightstand. The lock on their door showed up the next day and foiled further attempts to find even greater discoveries.
The Family Bed is as old as oatmeal but has found greater traction among Gen X than the Boomers before them. And it makes me wonder: what the hell are we thinking? I truly understand giving kids comfort and love during the night as well as during the day. And when babies are small and new and hungry, nursing them in bed is convenient and promotes better sleep for mom and baby.
But at what point does it get out of hand?
Alisyn reached her limit when her daughter turned three. The New York Times reports that some parents end up sharing beds with their kids out of desperation and describes a new category of parent with whom I totally sympathize, the "reluctant co-sleeper."
There is apparently now an entire industry devoted to helping families sort through various sleep problems, many of which are outlined in the Times piece. How is it that top attorneys, gallery owners, and CEOs cannot manage the boundaries and structure necessary to get kids back in their own beds?
I think the problem is in the power. Parents who exercise power during the day are most likely so wiped out in the evening or on the weekends that they have insufficient energy to devote to whipping those ankle-biters into shape. And tired parents are understandably more interested in having their kids in bed than in disrupting sleep night after night in order to get the kid back into bed. I could also be that we've become a generation that has completely lost site of the difference between loving our children and LOVING our children. I predict divorce rates will soon be skyrocketing unless we figure out a way to get Billy back into his own goddamn bed!
