I hope that the list can be kept informed about where and when this study is
to be published.  It would certainly be reassuring to those whose fear that
responsive, sensitive care of infants and little children leads to
out-of-control older kids.  As many of you know, my pre-breastfeeding work
was in community mental health --specifically child neglect and abuse
casework.  It is my impression, based on 22 years experience in these two
fields, that the rage and distractability of dysfunctional families comes
from abandonment issues and the pain of never getting ones needs met in
healthy, fulfilling ways. When normal needs for comfort,closeness and
affection are an unwelcome burden on others, they must be denied and
supressed lest that perceived need create even more rejection, more
abandonment. The emotional hunger this creates is a hole that individuals
spend a life-time sefl-destructively attempting to fill with money, power,
alcohol, sex, drugs, whatever. Or it creates violent acting out in a kind of
aimless revenge.

I continue to feel that in the West, we have something backwards about child
rearing.  We want tiny babies and small children to exercise more
self-disciplin with regard to eating and sleeping behavior than we expect
from older children and adults (whose behavior in those areas is remarkably
resistant to control.) Culturally, we  advise distance between our hearts
and our babies, then complain about why teens are uncommunicative and hostile.

I shared with the list about my daughter,  Emily, talking to her colloquium
about LAM and natural birth spacing in pre-industrial societies.  One of the
things which struck HER about the book they are studying on Tibet was a
scene where the writer, a Western woman, conversed with the Tibetan village
women about Western child rearing methods.  When these women (who wear their
infants for a long period of time and adore them in the face of 15% infant
mortality rates) heard that in the US women don't hold their infants much
and that they prefer to schedule formula from bottles rather than nurse,
they all began to weep for the babies.  Me too.

There is a difference between responsiveness and "spoiling" and  between
co-dependance and interdependance.  If the baby and child has not felt
beloved, emotionally, that is a being who lives in a city built on sand.  It
will spend the rest of its life working on re-building a foundation firm
enough to stand upon confidantly.

All this stuff about the Ezzos and  these other military child-rearing
programs is old, old stuff. It probably reflects a pendulum swing to try to
correct what folks see as a swing too far in the direction of
permissiveness.  However, the permissiveness of the last few decades of
parenting has not been indulgent, but neglectful.  Children have been
shuffled around due to a lot of factors -- many economic.  They have not
been spoiled by too much attention but by too little.  Slapping them with a
little more loss ought to really do the trick, huh?

What do I try to do or tell mothers?  I try to help parents see infants as
people who can communicate (I teach cue-ing) and I try real hard to get
breastfeeding to work.  Nothing so effectively reaches the heart of the
mother, and once she becomes the baby's champion, the baby is safe. Then, if
she asks me questions about things like spoiling or scheduling or limit
setting, I try to help her think it through logically, based on her own
awareness of human behavior, and to find reasonable and humane ways to do
things within the realities of her situation.  Balance works.

Barbara

Barbara Wilson-Clay, BS, IBCLC
Private Practice, Austin, Texas
Owner, Lactnews On-Line Conference Page
http://moontower.com/bwc/lactnews.html