Greetings, All--
A couple of months ago I went to a wonderful workshop on the
Transtheoretical Model of Change (sometimes called the Stages of Change).
There is a team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island (USA) who
have been working for many years on a theory of how people make changes in
their lives. I've been thinking about the stages and how to use them to be
more effective when teaching about breastfeeding.

The early stages seem to me to be the most sensitive. In Precontemplation, a
person really isn't interested in changing (e.g, "Breastfeeding is gross and
I would never do it."). If we come in like gangbusters with all our
information and encouragement, we're likely to turn this person off. Maybe
get the same reaction from women in the next stage of Contemplation.

I have a great resource on smoking during pregnancy that has booklets for
women in the various stages--has anyone seen anything like this on
breastfeeding? ICEA has a booklet called "Should You Breastfeed Your Baby?"
which is pretty good but probably has more reading than the typical
Precontemplator would be interested in. It's also written in the mode of
"breastfed babies have fewer allergies" rather than "Babies who are not
breastfed have more allergies." (Just re-read Diane Weissinger's excellent
article in the Journal of Human Lactation on the language we use--very
inspiring!).

If any of you are working with the Stages of Change in your writing, I'd
love to hear from you.


Leslie Ayre-Jaschke
Peace River, Alberta, Canada