I've really enjoyed the witty responses to the "I was fed formula and turned
out fine..." thread.  However, may I gently propose for consideration that
maybe these rather tart responses won't win friends.  BF Skinner (yes, that
Skinner) once said in a lecture I attended years ago, "You can't help
someone you can't make friends with."  Self-centered fear (is there really
any other kind) drives a lot of our responses.  To be told we are "not ok"
whether on a primary health level or on a conduct level with regard to our
parenting is deeply frightening.  Once that fear gets triggered, it tends to
drive people into either denial or anger.  Communication becomes a lot more
difficult when people are in those resistant modes.

When I encounter this attitude, I try to establish friendly rapport first
before beginning to educate with analogies about car seat use or second hand
smoke (which ARE good ones to use).  I might say something like, "I know
what you mean.  It can be really confusing as a parent to try to sort
through all the loud "expert" voices.  This must happen in every generation,
because I can remember my own mother worrying about it."  Generally, this
leads to openings where we both admit to feeling vulnerable because if you
slip up -- even inadvertently, you might turn out to be responsible for
harming your own child, which is an awful thought.  We can all identify with
this, and once we identify with each other, we can have a real discussion
about the forward march of research info, and what we really are learning
about early biological programming and health, and how we might try to be
open minded about taking in some new info on a better way to feed in light
of this info.

Of course this type of discourse is  less immediately satisfying than being
"right", but no one has ever thanked me for information shared in a
self-righteous or sarcastic manner.

Barbara Wilson-Clay, BS, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
LactNews Press
www.lactnews.com

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