Last week I asked for ideas for opening up a talk for high school students.
I received so many wonderful ideas that I could have talked for three hours,
unfortunately I only had 3o minutes!

Diane Wiessinger shared with me the very humorous words of a PSA run by the
Ithaca Breastfeeding Coalition and I gave each student a line to read from
it and that is how I started.  It got lots of laughs and really broke the
ice.  I also started by passing out a home made chocolate chip cookie to
every other student and a tiny store bought cookie to the other students.
Those students were asking for a home made cookie but I told them they could
not have one. I decided to pass them out myself rather than let them choose
so they could appreciate the fact that this is a feeding decision that the
mother makes, leaving the baby powerless as to what he gets...and after all
didn't every student in the room really deserve the best cookie?  They
really got it!

I tackled the sex issue right away.  The words to the PSA start out "I can
do it for an hour and not get sore.  We love to do it in bed..."  So they
all were thinking sex.  I asked them if they thought I was here to talk to
them about something sexual.  Many heads nodded, I told them I wasn't there
to talk about anything to do with sex or even really to talk about
breasts...I was there to talk about feeding babies.

It was a great start and they were almost all paying attention!  Then I had
picked out short pieces of information...one or two liners about benefits of
breastmilk, bonding issues...simple statements and quotes, and put those on
overheads.  I spoke for 1 -2 minutes on each overhead.

They seemed excited and one boy even told his teacher at the end that he had
changed his mind about breastfeeding and would definitely encourage his wife
to breastfeed...that made all the effort worth it!

Thanks again for all the great ideas!

Beth Seidel, IBCLC
Pekin, IL

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