Last night I went to sleep in the usual fashion, nestled between my two children. I felt like a farrow next to her shoats. A few months ago I met a young woman whose parents used to have to lie down with her at night to get her to sleep also. But she didn't need that anymore, I asked anxiously (she was in graduate school). No, she laughed. She still has trouble dropping off, though.

For a few weeks, I was on an attachment parenting list, and I found it touching and hilarious to see how the true believers got around the problem of the kids just not sleeping through. They'd do it when they were ready, they got inestimable benefits from the familial closeness, Dr. Sears says, &c. But, some timid poor lost soul would cry, I haven't had a night's sleep in fourteen months, and he wakes up every hour and a half....