>Elisheva makes the point that it is hard to tell if a weaning is truly child
>led.

Are any normal weanings truly totally child-led?  Can you picture the mare
who doesn't kick at the older foal now and then?  Or the cat who doesn't
sometimes walk away from the older kittens?  I suspect the normal mammalian
"weaning dance" - even for humans - involves a mother who's more and more
reluctant at times (even if it's nothing more than "Just a minute, honey,
while I finish washing this last pot" or "We're going right home and we can
nurse there") and a child who at some point figures it's not important
enough to be worth overcoming her unpredictable resistance.

I really like Kathy Dettwyler's normal "weaning window" of 2 1/2 to 7 years.
 If weaning occurs *sometime* in there, odds are it's been a dance without a
great deal of outside pressure - just the gentle pressure that comes from a
busy mother not *always* wanting to.

I think "child-led" was an appropriate term when weanings were always
mother-mandated.  It got us to looking at the child for the first time in a
long time.   Maybe now we need a new term - perhaps "normal weaning" a la
Dettwyler vs "cultural weaning" - those subtle longterm pressures that cause
people to say a baby "weaned himself" at 9 months, when in fact the mom
started the process at birth without realizing it.  We need to stop
pretending the baby did it to himself.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY

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