Hello all,

Last Saturday, we had our 4-monthly volunteer study day. I was in a workshop with a collegue and the topic was didactics.
Our trainer put us at work by asking us to write down three learning goals for the moms in our group.
As I know, they have to be specific to work; you can't have the goal "moms should understand demand and supply", as that is not measurable, so it should be something like "moms can mention three ways to sustain supply", to just name one example. Anyway, one collegue said: "Moms can mention five advantages and three disadvantages of breastfeeding". Well... I honestly don't think there are disadvantages, so it would never be my learning goal, but more generally: I don't think and never talk in terms of (dis)advantage, as this implicitly compares to ABM. I would say "characteristics of breastfeeding", or if absolutely necessary "disadvantages of ABM", but rather "risks of ABM". How do you deal with this in your talking to moms and dads?
Diligently working my way through Lawrence, I stumbled upon this one the other day, in Chapter 7, Making an informed decision about infant feeding, page 249: "(...) Sometimes the push is to change many hospital routines and regulations to facilitate without assessing the full impact of those changes on all the mothers and infants. A sense of balance should be maintained. (Now comes my point...) *It is important to appreciate that some normal women cannot or will not nurse their babies. Their babies will survive and grow normally.* Each woman, infant, and family should be supported in their choice of infant feeding; it is their choice to make.The education and support should be specific for the particular needs of each mother-infant dyad." (end of quote)

As Diane points out in one of her articles, normal is a scary word. What is normal? And another word that seems funny to me in this context, is *appreciate*, especially in combination with *will not*. Shouldn't that be: "accept" or "realize"...? What do you think of this? And if I would like to ask or tell Ruth Lawrence about this, just as feedback for a new edition, can anyone tell me which is the way to go? Thank you.

Kindly,

Marianne

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