Where do I begin? As a psychotherapist for over 30 years, working with families, couples and children, I have to land firmly on the side against what should accurately be called the "Family Bed Syndrome."
From day one, the progression of a child's development is from symbiosis (the stage of complete psychological merging with the mother) to autonomy (the stage that begins in earnest at around one year and continues these days into early adulthood). While it is true that emotional and physical deprivation and a lack of healthy connection with a loving caretaker (usually the mother) during the first years of life will interfere with the development of healthy independence, it is equally true, and more common in today's "Park Slope Parents," that over-attachment between mother and child, and continued over-involvement by parents in the child's developmental process, prevents healthy individuation, as well, sometimes in ways that are more difficult to treat. Primary narcissism, the result of over-investment by a parent in a child in the early years, is one of the most virulent and resistant types of disorders faced in psychotherapy.
Sorry, but Mayim Bialik doesn't have a clue.
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