A Bedtime Experience Soothes Nation's Homeless Children

For America’s homeless and displaced children, a simple bedtime routine—a new book and a clean pair of pajamas—can symbolize something far greater: safety, dignity, and hope.

Child homelessness in New York City is at its highest level since the Great Depression. Nationally, more than 1.6 million children will experience homelessness this year. For many of these children living in shelters and group homes, basic comforts are rare. Pajamas and books—items often taken for granted—are unattainable luxuries. At night, children sleep on worn, broken mattresses, imagining what it might feel like to be tucked into bed and read a story. Many have already endured abandonment, abuse, and profound neglect.

That reality began to change when Genevieve Piturro, then 52, started volunteering once a week to read to children in homeless shelters.

“When I finished reading to them, they’d simply get into bed with their clothes on,” Piturro recalls. “The police had brought them in wearing nothing but the clothes on their backs—often dirty, sometimes covered in blood. They were alone and frightened, and given nothing but food.” One night, as she prepared to leave a Chicago shelter, a little girl whispered to her, “Please, don’t forget me.” Piturro says that moment stayed with her. “People come in and out of their lives, and they’re forgotten.”

Determined to ease the children’s loneliness, Piturro began asking friends and family to donate pajamas and books, even requesting them as birthday and holiday gifts for herself. What started as a small act of compassion soon grew into a nationwide mission: One Million Good Nights. Fourteen years later, through her nonprofit organization, Pajama Program—now known as Beyond Bedtime—more than two million new pajamas and books have been delivered to children in 32 states.

“These shelters are often the first stop before children are placed in foster care,” says Ronald E. Richter, Commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. “Having warm, beautiful pajamas makes that transition a little less traumatic. It helps children know there are caring people out there. In those moments, they feel like they’re going to be okay.”

Each year, roughly 5,000 children pass through the city’s children’s centers. Many are brought to the Pajama Program’s Reading Center on East 31st Street in Manhattan—a bright, welcoming space decorated with familiar Sesame Street and Disney characters and filled with books children can take home. While many children arrive smiling and eager to read, others come withdrawn, some bearing visible cuts and bruises.

To counter the institutional feel of many facilities, Piturro designed the Reading Center to feel like home. Volunteers host reading parties several times a week, sharing snacks and stories, creating moments of warmth and normalcy in otherwise unstable lives.

Looking ahead, Piturro hopes to open reading centers in other states. For now, however, one of the organization’s greatest challenges is meeting the needs of older children—especially teenagers—who require adult-size pajamas.

“People forget about the bigger kids,” Piturro says. “By age 10 or 11, they know the score. Adoption probably won’t happen, and they’d be lucky to find a foster family.” When donation boxes arrive filled only with items for younger children, she explains, it can be devastating. “That’s a double heartbreak. We beg for sizes 12 and 14 in kids, and adult small and medium, so teenagers know they’re remembered too.”

The demand continues to grow. Children enter the system year-round, and the waitlist for assistance has become overwhelming. Trauma compounds the need: many children, including teenagers, struggle with anxiety and fear so intense that they wet or soil themselves at night, creating an even greater demand for pajamas.

“Children are losing hope, and we have to step up,” Piturro says. “They’re terrified—of where they are, what’s happening, where they’ll go next.”

Complicating matters further, children are often moved quickly into emergency shelters or foster homes and may be forced to leave their belongings behind, even newly received pajamas and books.

During the holidays, the Pajama Program partners with NYCACS for an annual Christmas party for children without families. The event is catered and filled with gifts. Ana Fraioli, the organization’s New York City Chapter President, says the joy is palpable. “For a couple of hours, they stop wondering where they’re going or where their mom is—thinking, ‘Did mommy forget about me?’ We try to help them stay in the moment. Their lives are very tough.”

For Piturro, her staff, and thousands of volunteers nationwide, the most rewarding part of the work is witnessing a child’s reaction to receiving something new—something that belongs only to them.

“They recognize love in the form of footie pajamas and princess nightgowns,” Piturro says. “Those few moments, when we hand over that package, make all the sleepless nights worth it. I have to believe we’re making a difference. And I do.”