>Somewhere I read (Penelope Leach, I believe) years ago that older babies
>and toddlers learning when and where they can nurse and to be able to wait
>a little bit is part of the socialization process.

What first flashed through my mind is that toddler nursing is an
experience *mothers and children both* need to learn through
socialization, and there just aren't many role models here.  I'm sure
the child in the grass hut village nurses in a way that mimics his
peers, and his mom does whatever the other mothers do.  If little
Sally and Jimmy and Nancy do nothing but nurse all day, then Tommy
will want to too.  But in reality, those grass hut children are all
busy with other things as well (like helping to supplement the family
income at age 3 in some cases, right, Kathy D?),  and Tommy (and his
mom) follow their examples.

Move that scenario to a northern temperate, bottle-feeding,
don't-even-know-the-neighbors culture, and Tommy and his mom are both
at a loss, because no one else around them is nursing anymore.

How many of us with older nurslings found that they increased their
nursing at LLL meetings when there were lots of nursing babies around
for them to watch?  If little babies are the only models older
children and their mothers have, they probably retain a skewed image
of normal nursing frequency.

Maybe as more and more of us nurse into the toddler and preschooler
years, we'll develop some sort of cultural sense about how it works
for the majority of older nurslings.  I'll bet if you look at
playgroups in which most of the toddler-up kids are still nursing, you
find mothers learning from each other and setting practical limits.

>I didn't mean to imply that LLLI says you should not set any rules with
>toddlers.  I think I was just taking what I'd learned at meetings about
>babies and interpreting it to go with toddlers, too

Whoa, I think Lucy just said the same thing in a lot fewer words...

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY

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