By Patrick Boyle
© The Gazette Newspapers
July 15, 2000

Snug under a comforter, I am awakened by a touch. A soft hand glides across my chest and up my arm. Fingers crawl around my neck, over my cheeks, across my forehead and down my nose. In the predawn dark, a whisper woos me with song. "Take me out to the ballll-game, take me out ..."

"Alec, shhhh!"

Our three-year-old has crawled into our bed again.

And again he has handed my wife and I a dilemma: Do I forcibly return him to his bed, carving emotional scars that will make him an insecure, cold-hearted psychopath? Or do I let him snuggle with us, thus helping him grow into a sniveling wimp?

When your little one wants to sleep with you, those are your only options -- at least according to Parents' Book of Conventional Wisdom, an ancient oral tradition that parents solemnly pass on to each other at barbecues and Chuck E. Cheese parties. Like most American parents, I choose the Tough Love option, carrying my son down to his room while he wails, "But I want to sleep with you!" 120 times, because he knows I can't hear when I yawn.

As I lay on floor next to his bed until he goes to sleep (my compromise, so he has the option of becoming a wimp), I wonder if my wife and I should reconsider our strategy. This strategy is supposed to teach Alec to overcome his fears and comfort himself. Actually, I am violating the strict Tough Love formula, which is to lay him down and leave, let him scream, return to assure him that I haven't run away, leave, let him scream, etc. After two weeks of no sleep for everyone within 1,000 feet, he's supposed to have grown into a brave man who wonders why his parents are always tired.

Parenting experts usually write these formulas during the day, when many things sound reasonable. But in the clear light of four in the morning, real parents must balance textbook advice against, "In two hours I have to wake up and pretend to contribute to society."

In backwards societies like Japan, parents miss out on this struggle by just letting their kids sleep with them. When two University of Pittsburgh professors studied baby sleeping norms in 173 other societies, the number where parents routinely put infants in a separate room was zero. Even after toddlers move to their own beds, it is routine in many societies for them to sleep with their parents occasionally, and doing so regularly does not elicit warnings about 20 years of psychotherapy.

So why am I laying on Alec's floor? Because in the mid-19 Century U.S. pediatricians discovered that humans had been sleeping wrong for millions of years. They warned that letting kids sleep with their parents would lead to poor sleep habits, unhealthy dependence, and suffocation when parents roll over.

There is indeed something unseemly about letting your kid crawl into bed with you every time the shadows on her walls spook her. Let that happen enough, and getting her into her own bed will be like stuffing a cat into a bathtub.

But as I force my crying son into his bed, something inside tells me it isn't right. The experts aren't so sure anymore, either. Various studies of British and American children, college students and adults show that those who slept with their parents have greater self-esteem, are more comfortable with affection, experience less anxiety and are more independent than those who slept alone. The sleep-alone kids are harder to control and have more temper tantrums.

As for suffocation, it's an extremely rare event, which is more than offset by virtually erasing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which strikes when babies sleep alone.

In the face of this evidence, I must admit selfish motives for returning Alec to his mattress: I sleep better when there are fewer than six legs in my bed. When he's there, sex is out. And we're paying a mortgage on a three-bedroom house so that Alec and his teenage sister can have their own rooms.

Perhaps I should be more flexible. I'm not ready for the "family bed," a practice that is common in much of the world and has some vocal supporters here. ("The Family That Sleeps Together ...", http://family.go.com/Features/family). I'm not going to give in to Alec every time, but I'll play it by ear, literally.

He tests me days after the "take me to the ballgame" incident. "I want to come upstairs!" he cries at 2:30 in the morning. I lay him between me and my wife.

I do not sleep well. Alec kicks. But there is something irreplaceably warm about hearing him breathe at night, about turning over to find his head on my pillow, about doing this guilt-free.

It is a pleasant experience - even when Alec, disoriented by my change of strategy, wakes up and says, "Daddy, can you leave my bed?"