Getting children to sleep

Press, 11 June 1984, Page 20

Getting children to sleep

Sir,—Surely, whether a mother allows her child io sleep in her bed is not the deciding factor of how much she cares for her child. The child is only one member of a unit called a family, and the child’s needs must be balanced against the rest of the family’s. If parents cannot sleep with children next to them for fear of squashing them, because they turn and kick too much, they should train them to sleep in their own beds. A tired mother cannot give the same care and attention. No employer wants a tired husband. If the parents find they enjoy the child sharing the bed and it strengthens their bond, the practice suits the family unit. If there is more than one child, another weight has to be balanced. Each mother copes in the way that she is able, and the only important oucome is for a child to feel loved and wanted.-Yours, etc., R. W. HOSKINS. June 6, 1984.

Sir,— Sacrificing a child’s need to the parent’s need as T. Moon indicates (“The Press,” June 7), does not ensure independence m the child. Resulting self-reliance is born out of compliancy rather than choice. Yes, our culture reinforces and maintains dependency and passivity in women, unnecessarily, as it does independence and power in men. Through feminism, women have come into feeling awareness with their own unresolved dependency needs. Men's liberation movements allow men the realisation that their independence, strength and self-reliance is a facade. Underneath, men are fragile, vulnerable, “little” and afraid. Surely the parental task is to provide the environment whereby their child s dependency needs are metappropriately, and at the right time, in childhood. Hopefully the child-become-adult will be emotionally mature, independent, yet able to enter an interdependent relationship, to differentiate between sexual and sensual needs, to give and receive different types of love; able to parent.—Yours etc., CHRISTINE D. ROWLANDS. June 7, 1984.

Sir -T. E. Moon’s letter made me feel very sad. Can she really believe it is healthy to distrust other people? There is no shame in dependency: we are all dependent

on each other. I, too, want my daughter to be strong, but I see this as more complex than selfsufficiency. My daughter, like me, has parents who have always loved her intensely, but not always in ways appropriate to her. She may, like me, respond inappropriately to becoming a parent herself. If this happens, I want her, as I did, to have the trust to go to someone and say: “I am afraid; I feel helpless. I need help; I need comfort; I need something I can’t name, I only know I need it desperately.” The trust to reach out for help is perhaps the most important thing we can give her. “No man is an island”—no woman either.—Yours, etc., CATHERINE GLUE. June 7, 1984.