>A good friend of mine who lives in upstate New York loved 
>breastfeeding her son and was in a really supportive community 
>towards breastfeeding. She was also very good friends with a 
>published lactavist. All in all, her breastfeeding world was a happy 
>and supportive place. When she was ready to wean her 20 month old 
>she called LLL for support and guidance. The first thing she was 
>asked was "Why do you want to wean your baby?" This would seem like 
>a perfectly normal question to somebody looking in from the outside, 
>but to my friend what she heard was "There is something wrong with 
>you for wanting to wean your baby."


This is why communication and counselling skills are *so* important .

Asking questions is a delicate area in breastfeeding counselling, at 
least in the way I do it and the way I teach it.

We would not want our bfcs to ask this question - though it is key to 
the whole encounter.  It's a loaded question.

Instead, the dialogue would go something like this

Bfc: so, you're breastfeeding, and you're wanting to explore ways of 
weaning your baby from the breast, is that right? And he's 20 mths?
Mother : yes, that's right.
Bfc: ok,  is it ok to talk with you about your options, and maybe 
explore what would feel ok with you - 'cos as you probably know, 
there's no one 'right way' really....
Mother: yes, that's ok.
Bfc: right...there may be a reason why you're asking this at this 
time....can we talk about what that might be?
Mother: I just feel it's the right time/my mother in law thinks it's 
disgusting/I have to go away for the weekend and my milk will dry up, 
won't it?/my husband thinks he's too old to be breastfed etc etc etc 
etc etc

So we do get to 'why do you want to wean your baby?' for sure....but 
tentatively and not in-your-face...and if it has been skilled enough, 
the mother will hopefully  *not* hear  'why do you want to wean your 
baby?'.  'Being ready to wean' is only one of dozens of reasons why 
that mother might be making a 'weaning call' at that time, as we know.

We supporters need to anticipate that people will feel sensitive and 
may even feel ready to be judged by us - and if we are going to get 
any meaningful dialogue at all with them we have to think of ways to 
talk with them that deliberately avoid any misinterpretation.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK
-- 
http://www.heatherwelford.co.uk

http://heatherwelford.posterous.com

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