Like any Jewish mother worth her salt, I’ve been bursting with pride over my son’s accomplishments ever since he was born seven months ago. He sits! He crawls! He pulls himself up to stand! But, alas, there is one sphere where he has been making no progress, and that is in the sleep department. Not only does he not sleep through the night, he wakes every hour or two, his face wet with tears, the pitch of his cries ever rising. And so, like many exhausted parents, we finally decided to sleep-train him. But unlike many other exhausted parents, our decision happened to coincide with the outbreak of war between Israel and Gaza.
At night, while my son cries it out, my husband and I sit glued to the Internet, refreshing the news over and over. We are following the advice of a highly-recommended book on sleep, but we cannot follow it exactly because every few days—during naptime and sleeptime—I have had to pick my son up and carry him into the stairwell of our apartment building while rockets rain down on Jerusalem. I know it would be worse if we lived in Tel Aviv or in Sderot, and, of course, it would be worse in Gaza. Suddenly, rather than cry, my son is simply quiet, as though he knows that there must be an important reason for me to wake him on purpose. But when I put him back down, the screaming starts all over again.
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From Tablet Magazine
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