Henya wrote,
> The shepards were saying that
> most of the exclusively bottle fed animals will have severe behavioral
> problems , and as they grow become unmanageable.
Mmm... I was thinking that my bf kids were unmanageable, but you're
reminding me that we've been raising generations of kids who haven't
been showing normal behavioural patterns, and some of them are adults
who are not able to judge what is normal because they haven't respected
physiological norms. So what we consider problems might not be the same
if we were considering child-centred, breastfed, ap populations. If mine
are any indication, creative, questioning, active, self-aware and
sensitive kids may just be the biological norm. I'll have to remember to
look at it this way. (It was helpful when they were toddlers for my
husband and me to remind ourselves that this was age-appropriate behaviour.)
Actually, ever since I read K, Dettwyler, J. Newman etc. I have been
aware of how much we do to make children conform to the expectations of
our particular society. The relationship between the ability to space
feedings with formula and the economic advantage of spacing work breaks
in industrialized workplaces was an eye-opener. Putting aside personal
needs like eating and going to the bathroom are certainly extensions of
this expectation in the classroom. Right now my pet peeve is the belief
that schools and other institutions have to train children for the
workplace, not in terms of providing them with coping skills but in
terms of conforming to an external discipline. A school here has just
banned sweat pants in a high school because they are unprofessional. A
very clever (bf?) young woman who was interviewed reminded us that not
all jobs required suits, and that anyway, "we're kids!" Good point! To
me, child-led (or even child-sensitive) weaning which enables our
children to be physically close to us as long as they need to be seems
to be related to giving children permission to be kids *and* giving
adults permission to have non-traditional work/family/life-paths rather
than putting their "personal" (family) needs aside in their search for
non-unionized, white colour, low-wage employment in which the boss tells
you whether you look and act professional enough. Remember, this is the
expectation that most of the mothers we work with grew up with. We need
to support her inclination to follow her best and truest self and her
most deeply-rooted instincts in the face of these unhealthy expectations..
Jo-Anne (who took her conference call in her pyjamas this morning, and
is now wearing stretchy pants and a ripped t-shirt. Oversharing? No! I'm
making a point!)
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