Heather -
Excellently said! I think you've put it very well - it's what I think of as
the "art" of helping a woman breastfeed her baby. And not everyone can do it
equally well, sadly.
Interesting that in the UK things don't seem to be as polarized into these
various "labelled parenting" styles. I think that this is probably a good
thing. I feel at an advantage myself in being "old" - well, in comparison to
new parents! - and past the stage in life where I get so caught up in all
these different labels and styles. I think of my own parenting when my kids
were little as having been "old-fashioned" or what I am fortunate enough to
be able to think of as "regular" parenting (a word we didn't have the, by
the way!); I didn't read books and go to seminars and classes and meetings,
I just did what my heart and my brain and (thank you, mom and dad!) my
upbringing led me to do.
I recently visited my younger sister, whose boys are little, and was really
struck by all the agonizing and fussing around over this style or that one
of "parenting" that she & her peers were caught up in. I would have been
totally worn out and confused and worn to a frazzle by all that! But these
are older parents of young children (mothers in their forties with kids
pre-school through age 8 or so), affluent, educated, and from what I can see
completely bogged down in which "technique" to try to get their kids to put
on their shoes in the morning or eat a meal at the table or any of a number
of things that I just assumed my kids would do without a whole song & dance
(and they did, agreeably for the most part). I carried my babies when they
were little because it seemed like the most natural thing to do (and it kept
them happy); I held them very closely as babies & toddlers, and gradually
and what seemed to me automatically stepped up their responsibilities and
their freedoms as they grew. I have to say that, as unscientific as it was,
I have good results so far; I attribute it to good luck, rather than any
particular skill on my part. But I can see that, for all the fretting and
worrying and applying various theories to the raising of their kids, all
these affluent, conscious families I observed who were going at it so hard
were having many more, and far more serious problems, than I did with my
simple-minded follow-my-instincts approach.
I don't say any of this to try to sound superior or know-it-all (NO parent
of teens knows it all, trust me!), but only because I think I was lucky to
not have to worry much about Ferber or Ezzo or Sears or "Christian
parenting" or whatever. (Well, there was always Dr. Spock, and Penelope
Leach, and Sheila Kitzinger...) I also *know* that I was incredibly
fortunate in having had an upbringing that left me comfortable and confident
in my abilities to raise my kids by just plain old following my instincts
and my own parents' model. I know not everyone has that, and it's one of the
reasons I am so attracted to this work with parents. It seems often that
fewer and fewer parents feel any confidence or strength in trusting their
own judgements, probably because they don't have that kind of model in their
own lives.
Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY
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