Thank you, Nikki!
I fully agree; it is exactly why I get so frustrated when practising with
the lc-exams... Which answer is right, most of the time depends on much,
much more than the information you're being given in the question. This
often makes the 'right' answer wrong, as far as I'm concerned, because
leaving all the other options out, is doing a disservice to the mother and
can even easily be a sign of disrespect.
For instance: "What behaviour is to be expected from a child this age?" Then
follow four answers, belonging to maybe four different ages. Judging the age
of the child by only watching the couple, would really, really be a very
wrong way to go about a consult... :-s How the heck can I know whether the
baby is small or large for his or her age...? One would always ask, but as
you say: being expected to judge by the looks of it, can become a bad
habit... I feel a strong inner resistance to working this way, even if it
would get me good grades... Still haven't found the button in me to push
that gets me in 'the idiot mode', as one of my colleagues jokingly called
it... ;o)

Warmly,

Marianne Vanderveen, Netherlands (slowly but surely just hoping to pass and
then let go of this one-track-thinking...)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nikki Lee" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 1:14 PM
Subject: [LACTNET] another reason for the one answer mentality


> Dear Friends:
>    I agree with Ellen Shein. And I would add one  more thing to her
> thoughts
> about reasons that people want and give the ONE  answer. The mutiple
> choice
> test, by which most people are examined, encourages  this type of
> thought.The
> multiple choice test wants the one answer.
>    I saw this with my children in school, particularly  with my youngest
> who
> would read a question in a workbook and have a brilliant,  logical process
> to
> arrive at an answer that made complete sense...........yet it  wasn't the
> one
> that the teacher/workbook wanted.
>    I hear it in Sam Doak's schoolwork to become a  nurse,as she learns the
> important skill of picking the one "right" answer that  is also completely
> inaccurate. In the US, most IBCLCs are  nurses.........when our basic
> training
> sets up our mental processes, it takes  maturity and openness and
> experience to
> realize that when working with people,  there is often  more than one
> answer.
>    On a personal note, I am still surprised with  my own narrow thinking
> when I encounter an "out of the box" response that  wakes me up. This is
> another
> reason we need collaborative  networks of  professionals from all
> disciplines,
> so that we may be kept out of ruts!

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