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