On 04/02/2012 12:19, Elizabeth Brooks wrote:
> My heart goes out to you, and to this whole family. What a mess.
>
> Get to the guardian ad litem (GAL), and offer to provide him/her with
> background information and insight on extended BFg, and child attachment.
>
> Your biggest "risk" right now -- please hear where I am coming from -- is
> that you will overwhelm the GAL with too much information, delivered too
> passionately.
Agree completely with this, but not with a couple of other points:
>
> Take something short sweet and authoritative about BF. I love ILCA's
> "Risks of Not BF" for that reason -- discussing short- and long-term health
> effects of BF, for both mom and baby of BF.
The issue here is not over *breastfeeding*, but over *extended*
breastfeeding. It's vital to remember this, because the majority of
society see them in completely different ways - breastfeeding a baby as
something wonderful, good, and ideal, but breastfeeding a toddler/older
child as ewww, wrong, perverse. Those are the attitudes you're going to
be up against. Bringing up articles based on studies done on infant
breastfeeding is therefore not going to be helpful here, because it
isn't going to address the issue. As I said elsewhere, the relevant
extracts from the AAP's and AAFP's statements on the issue and possibly
from Kathy Dettwyler's letter is likely to be of more help.
>
> Try to take the focus off of "BF" as a "problem." The focus should be on
> the child's need for consistent attachment parenting, given his history --
> and that is best provided at this age-and-stage by BF.
Do remember that that last - the idea that breastfeeding is superior to
all other methods of continuing a secure attachment with a toddler - is
only an *opinion*, and that there isn't anything better than very
questionable anecdotal evidence to back it up. Pushing it too hard can
backfire - it weakens your case to state as fact something that can't be
backed up, and it may even alienate people who have formed secure
attachments to their children in other ways, by effectively (even though
only by implication) making their parenting out to be in some way
inferior. Of course, you can argue that breastfeeding may be important
for this particular child as it's what he's used to and stopping it may
be too abrupt a change for him to deal with (which may well be what you
meant to say), but I'd steer clear of trying to make out that it's some
kind of superior parenting technique in general terms.
Best wishes,
Sarah Vaughan
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