"Go Ahead—Sleep With Your Kids"

via:  http://www.naturalchild.org/quotes/

"According to Ferber, the trouble with letting a child who fears sleeping alone into your bed is that 'you are not really solving the problem. There must be a reason why he is so fearful.' Yes, there must. Here's one candidate. Maybe your child's brain was designed by natural selection over millions of years during which mothers slept with their babies. Maybe back then if babies found themselves completely alone at night it often meant something horrific had happened - the mother had been eaten by a beast, say. Maybe the young brain is designed to respond to this situation by screaming frantically so that any relatives within earshot will discover the child. Maybe, in short, the reason that kids left alone sound terrified is that kids left alone naturally get terrified. Just a theory."


- Robert Wright,
Slate Magazine


The whole article is here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_earthling/1997/03/go_aheadsleep_with_your_kids.single.html