Gonneke says,

<< Large part of my work as LC is teaching hcp's. I quite often get the
question
 ''But then what do we have to do now?'' They want to know how often, how
much,
 how long, when and what. That is how they were teached to work in the first
 place: there are rules for everything you do as a nurse or postnatal
caretaker.
 So when we teach them that their first set of rules is outdated, they're
happy
 to change, but need to have another set of rules. And most of the time we
have
 to tell them that no mother-baby-pair is like any other pair and that there
are
 no rules for every situation. So, I think that only a shift in initial
training
 methods in nursing school will change this kind of thinking. People in
 healthcare professions need to learn to think for themselves, train their own
 curiosity and creativity, train their intuition as well as scientific
thinking
 skills. Ofcourse there need to be a stable and sound basis of scientific
 knowledge, but that needs not be translated into a fixed set of rules. >>

Such wise words.  But I would recommend to EVERYONE that you pick up a copy
of the LC Series from ages ago -- 1986?  that Debi Bocar wrote on "Acquiring
the Parental Role:  A Theoretical Perspective" and read it from the viewpoint
of "Acquiring the LC Role:  A Theoretical Perspective."  What Gonneke is
describing is the newbie IBCLC at the "formal" level where she/he needs rules
because that's how we ALL begin in a profession.  What we oldies want are
folks that move directly from the classroom/learning to "personal" -- this is
how I practice as an IBCLC; this is what works in individual situations, this
is how I adapt the new "rules" to work with this particular mom/baby couplet.


But, it just isn't going to happen.  It's a process and it takes time.
Doesn't matter WHAT profession we are going into, whether it is parenting,
nursing, computer programming, midwifery, or IBCLCing -- we all have to go
through the learning curve; the growth process to get to the point where we
CAN think on our own and don't have to go by the rules all the time.  Where
we understand that there are no rules, except, in our case, perhaps, feed the
baby....and do no harm....and some other basics.

We can encourage folks to move along the curve so they become proficient, but
we can't make 'em be where we are now -- in my case, I can't expect a newbie
IBCLC to be where I am -- I've been doing this for 15 years.

Jan B in sunny Wheaton.

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