I don't think DCFS has any right to be involved in this decision between me and my child. The boy told the investigator that he always slept in clothes. In an interview, the mother says she has not slept with him naked since he was around age 3, when she stopped because her son commented that she should put some clothes on. Though she has since moved, the mother says her son did not have his own room or his own bed in their former three-bedroom apartment. Her parenting style and the way she was raised bring to the fore areas of child-rearing that many of today's parents keep private because they are not seen as widely acceptable in society, experts say.
Research shows that many women continue to nurse their children well beyond infancy.
It is a recent Western concept engrained in us, an emphasis on individualism and the idea that it's a moral principle that early in life babies and children need to soothe themselves. In a healthy human family, sleeping arrangements can enhance that which is already good, or it could be the case sleeping arrangements can enhance that which is already bad. In the Champaign case, experts are divided on how the nursing was affectingthe boy. A report by Champaign forensic psychologist Dr. Marty Traver,who evaluated the boy upon referral from Judge Einhorn, described an alert, relaxed child who expressed ambivalence about nursing. A parent must weigh the damage done by participating in something society does not approve of against the positive effects and advantages of continuing to do so.