My Gigantic Jewish Family Bed
Mayim Bialik in the family bed with her two sons.
Last week, abcnews.com posted an article by famed co-sleeping expert Elizabeth Pantley about how to stop co-sleeping and get your kids out of your bed.
If you’ve read my writing before, you know I’m a big proponent of co-sleeping. My husband, 3- and 6-year-old sons, and I share a gigantic family bed which consists of a king and a full futon pushed together on the floor, and I believe our co-sleeping will end when our family sees that it is time to end it. But it’s not my intention to tell you why co-sleeping is good and beneficial and natural and fun (my book which comes out in March devotes a whole chapter to that). I want to share two things that go on in our family bed that are specifically Jewish, because I don’t hear it spoken about very often.
Disclaimer: the things I describe can (and do) also occur in non co-sleeping families, but this is simply the experience of our family bed from a Jewish perspective.
1. Bedtime Shema. After teeth are brushed (Fred fighting the brushing with varying intensity on any given night), and everyone has gone to the bathroom one last time (ditto; he’s 3, it’s normal, right!?), we read books, Fred nurses, and we sing the first two lines of the Shema. As a child, my parents recited the Shema to me and just as it was technically my first full sentence as a toddler, it was our boys’ first as well.
