It occurs to me that, as a culture, we have a belief that any aspect of a child's development that we *can* control, we *must* control, and eventually we believe that if we *don't* control it, it won't occur.  

Beyond a good diet, there's not much we can do during pregnancy to influence fetal development, so we let it alone and truly believe that the fetus will do its own developing, as of course it does.  But birth?  Ah, now we can start to interfere, and we've reached the point where many believe birth can't happen without highly trained "help".

After our wretched births, we push the baby's head into the breast because we know he doesn't know what to do without our help.  We agonize over how we'll know when he's hungry and full, and watch the calendar instead of the baby to know when he's ready for solids.  

Happily, we haven't figured out a way to make him walk on his first birthday, so here again we continue to believe that somehow he'll manage on his own... and he does.  But do we honestly think these kids would be going to college incontinent and awake 24/7 if we didn't potty train them and teach them to fall asleep on their own?

Like the young of every other mammal, human children are programmed to become functioning adults without starving to death or becoming immobile jellyfish.  Like every other mammalian mother, our role is to make opportunities available - to allow full access to our breast, and to "be around" solid foods - and to let the child take advantage of them when he's ready.  Cups, spoons, and baby foods are recent inventions; somehow the species muddled along without them for a very long time.  But now that we *can* control a baby's solids, we suspect that if we don't, the baby will either stay on the breast forever or starve, most likely both.   

I'm having fun with this!  What else about childrearing do we leave confidently to Mother Nature because we can't control it, and what else do we assume we *must* control because we *can* control it?  Those ol' teeth seem to come through pretty well all on their own, don't they...

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com  

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