Marathon Swimming

I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Homeland and Other Stories. I'm sort of impressed. It is a series of short stories - some I like, some are just "ok". The first one I read I found quite interesting - It is the story of a couple who are in their late 30's, trying to decide whether or not to have a baby.

“Lena’s eyes are a very serious, oceanic shade of blue. “What do you really think?” she asked me.

“Well. I have to admit the idea overwhelms me. To rock the boat, just when I feel like I’ve finally gotten my life arranged the right way.” I considered this. “From what I can tell, it’s not even like rocking the boat. It’s like sinking the boat, and swimming for eighteen years.”

Leaving A Legacy

La Leche League (www.lalecheleague.org) (LLLI) is a worldwide organization dedicated to helping mothers and babies with breastfeeding. I've been involved in it - in one capacity or another - for many years. I still am working with the Leader Accreditation Department, accrediting more Leaders to help more moms and babies here in my neck of the woods and throughout the world.

On Sunday, May 25th, Edwina Froehlich (one of the seven LLLI Founders) suffered a stroke. All of us who care deeply about her are waiting, watching, and praying - while we wait for more information. The last we heard, they are still doing some testing, but she is quite old (90+) so expectations are not high. In her honor, as well as the other six Founders (also old but not as old as Edwina), today I will share some breastfeeding and baby related thoughts.

From Your Amazing Newborn, by Klaus and Klaus (I met them - a husband/wife team - at an LLL Area Conference a few years ago.):

"...In addition, when the infant suckles from the breast, special cells in both the mother's and infant's brains secrete oxytocin (also known as the "cuddle hormone") into the brain. Increased brain oxytocin results in slight sleepiness, milk euphoria, a raised threshold for pain and, most appropriately, increased love for the baby."

Dr. Naomi Baumslag: "In many parts of the world, a woman would be considered guilt of neglect for weaning a child less than two years old."

And the rest of these are from Seven Voices, One Dream, a book about the history of La Leche League:

Marian Tompson said: "And then one day, as I was leaving Mary's, I was standing on the steps of her house and we were debating for the umpteenth time whether or not to do this. And I finally said, "You know, Mary, if we can help mothers nurse their babies, then we will be helping families, and if we are helping families, we will be helping society. So I think we ought to try it." So that's when we made the decision to go ahead with it."

"Along the way, Mary White became known as the "guardian angel" of the mother-baby relationship. Mary never hesitated to speak out. Circumstances might change, she'd remind the group, but a baby's needs do not."

About people who supported LLL from early on: "Oh, and Dr. Kimball - E. Robbins Kimball. We first heard of him as being very supportive of breastfeeding. We later found out that what had convinced him that breastfeeding was really special was when he was part of the Army liberating the prisoner-of-war camps in WWII. He said that while the adults might be skin and bones, the toddlers that were being breastfed were running around and were healthy. He realized that even if a mother was malnourished, she still could feed her baby very adequately."

I've met all seven Founders, several times. I've co-spoken with a few of them in Area Conference sessions over the years. I love each of them and the work they started. For the sake of my grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, I'm grateful La Leche League exists.

Enough for today. I'll find a picture of Edwina and I together from last year's International Conference to add to this post soon. (now added to the top)

Cup Filling

From Playful Parenting, by Lawrence J. Cohen:

About times with kids when "He's just looking for attention" is uttered or thought:

For years, the standard advice has been to ignore such behavior. I don't get that. We don't say, "He keeps asking for food, but I just ignore him; he's only saying that because he's hungry." We don't say, "Your cup is empty, so I'll make sure you don't get a refill." If someone is looking for attention that bad, I figure they must need some attention! If we give them enough of the good kind, they won't be so desperate that they'll settle for the bad kind.

The Value of a Dimmer Switch

I really like the book Playful Parenting.

The author's got a great sense of humor. For example, when one child comes to him to complain about the other....:

"Hmmmmm, this sounds like a bad case of it all started when she hit me back."

But he's also quite wise. About the importance of identifying the reason for a child's misbehavior - and why it is important to not go on auto-pilot:

"It doesn't make much sense to say: You are feeling bad, so I'm going to yell at you. You are lonely, so I am going to send you to your room. You are feeling disconnected from other people, so I am going to hit you. You're hungry, but I"m going to take your toys away instead of feeding you. Absurd! Punishment enters into the scene because of our own feelings: I am mad, so I'm going to yell at you. I am frustrated, so I am going to have a temper tantrum. I am scared, so I am going to scare you. I've had a hard day, so I'm going to take it out on you."

Along the same lines,

"Emotional competence means that we have a dimmer switch, instead of just an on-off button, on our feelings. We want children to be able to express strong feelings in a modulated way, safely and respectfully, but directly. We don't want them to have a switch that is stuck on off, or that can't be shut off at all."

Don't you love the way he writes - and his ideas?

Are You Listening?

These last few weeks I've been able to spend more one-on-one time with my youngest son. With none of the rest of the family around, we spend the time doing whatever we want to do - so far, it's been trips to the library and long walks geocaching (oops, this week he played his favorite game on the computer without brothers helping and I finally tried the creme brulee recipe I'd been meaning to attempt - while checking in with him periodically), but I'm sure it will expand to other activities as time goes on. It is fun to have him alone and listen to him talk. And talk. And talk.

Reminded me of a terrific book called "Playful Parenting," by Lawrence Cohen. I read it a few years ago, while more of my kids were little, and a lot he said made great sense. I wish I had heard his ideas years before...

From the book:

Tuning in does not mean questioning our children about every little detail of their lives. Instead, tell an interesting story from your day; they might respond with one of their own. Another mistake we make is cutting them off when they are talking about "unimportant" things, or when they are chattering away about nothing, or when they are repeating themselves. Then, later, we expect them to tell us what we want to hear. That's not fair. We have to listen patiently to their way of telling things, even when it is excruciatingly dull to us, if we want them to get around to telling us the good stuff. Understandably, they want to know that we are really listening and aren't going to interrupt them or scold them, before they are going to share anything important with us.

Now that I'm listening more...yes, he's sharing more.

Stay tuned these next few posts for more from this terrific book. Your kids and grandkids will benefit. (If you don't have kids now, file this info away for when you do...please.)

Intuitive? Maybe Not.

I see over and over examples of how we have let our "intuition" and "common sense" be over run by what the media and others tell us...

From How Weaning Happens, by Diane Bergson, when she writes of primitive societies:

(Note: The name of the society is the !Kung, with an upside-down exclamation mark at the beginning. Since I have no clue how to make one here, I'll use a right-side up one.)

"In the book Childhood, author Melvin Konner tells about reading a passage to a !Kung woman from Dr. Benjamin Spock about the importance of having schedules and ignoring the baby's cries while you work about the house. Dr. Konner explains the mother's reaction: "The !Kung mother looked bemused and disapproving. 'Doesn't he understand he's only a baby, and that's why he cries?' she said. 'You pick him up and comfort him. Later, when he grows older, he will have sense, and he won't cry anymore.'" Dr. Konner adds, "the !Kung bet on maturation - and they have never yet had a child who didn't outgrow crying."

And we consider them "primitive"? Seems like we are the "primitive" ones, at least when we neglect our offspring...