Barbara writes:

<< The word intervention seems to be getting some bad press. Setting a broken
 leg is an intervention.  Pulling out a splinter is an intervention.
 Sometimes problems resolve on their own, but often problems require
 intervention.  Ideally, one's life is spent without needing too many
 interventions, but when they are required, please God, send me someone who
 will perform the intervention without hurting me.  I submit that the problem
 is not intervention itself, but stupid interventions.  The precipitous
 decline of breastfeeding in the first few weeks of life in all populations
 speaks to the fact that women need help in the learning period, don't get
 enough informed assistance, and quit (often in despair) because the advice
 they get tends to be inconsistent and ineffective to solve their problems.
 The big reasons women wean are perceived or real insufficient milk supply,
 and sore nipples.  A few sensible interventions there would be a blessing. >>

I'm with you on this one, Barbara.  And sometimes we don't "need" an
intervention -- we'd survive without it, like a formula fed baby, or a
limping person whose broken bone was never properly set -- but we can have an
easier and happier life if we get a little bit.

And, as I have come to see through watching my toddler-and-now-preschooler in
speech therapy, teaching is an intervention in development -- a joyful,
helpful, supportive intervention.   There is nothing so happy as a 2.5 year
old who can suddenly make herself better understood, and couldn't without the
help of the department that here in New York City is called "Early
Intervention."

Last week I spent a long morning with a first time mother and her 2 day old
daughter, reminding the mother over and over again that when your baby wakes
up smiling and rooting, that means it's time to feed her, not time to finish
filling out the birth record form for a while until she is screaming in
ravenous hysteria.  And as the mom gradually did learn that, her baby
gradually learned to latch and suck and be a little more relaxed about
whether nursing would be forthcoming.   Without those dozen reminders, the
mother would have continued in the direction she was going before I arrived
-- of concluding that she had a high need baby and not enough milk to feed
her (this on day 2 -- groan!).   So in this case nudging was an intervention
-- but a pretty benign one, a kind of gentle push of development in the
direction that all parties concerned really wanted it to go anyway.

I do agree that "Intention" only matters if you actually know what the heck
you are doing, and "first do no harm" is still a good rule.  But even with
those two caveats, most of us can benefit from a little bit of loving,
sensible, educational, or therapeutic intervention occasionally.

Elisheva Urbas

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