Hey, we're ALWAYS uncomfortable with things we do not know. So lets change that.

So I guess I don't know why I didn't see this coming. I'm not going to post the reason(s) in its completeness yet though. And yes, this is on my decision to breastfeed until the natural biological  time the baby grows out of the need and stops. Just giving you some food for thought...or thought for food.  ;-)

"If a child can ask to nurse, there's something wrong with doing so."nursing -- something that is an act of love and affection -- is seen as inappropriate past a certain age. Giving children bottles, which were designed to imitate the breast, is also acceptable. As stated in The Nursing Mother's Companion:

Many toddlers are dependent on a bottle, pacifier, thumb, or blanket, and this is quite accepted, but a mother who is nursing a toddler may have to deal with veiled or point-blank suggestions that her child is too old for it.?????
(good one, that's some brilliant thinking there...the same exact thing is happening, you're just giving it a pacifier or blankie instead. Your baby is in obvious developmental need for something.)

"Extended nursing will spoil a child," also known as, "He'll nurse until he goes off to college." This myth touches on peoples' fears that nursing into toddlerhood spoils children and doesn't teach them independence. In reality, it's not breastfeeding, which meets many needs, that spoils a child -- rather, it's the absence of teaching acceptable behavior that causes a child to "spoil." Bumgarner comments:

It is without closeness and loving, and without sufficient attention to the business of teaching good behavior that children are spoiled...things which are spoiled are things which have been left on the shelf to rot.

It's interesting to note that parents can't force a child to crawl, walk, or talk before they're ready, and yet they're encouraged by others to impose early weaning on these same children without recognizing it as one of the more significant events of their lives.

Dr. William Sears, who wrote The Baby Book, states:

We have studied the long-term effects on thousands of children who had timely weanings and have observed that these children are more independent, gravitate to people more than things, are easier to discipline, experience less anger, radiate trust...[after] studying the long-term effects of long-term breastfeeding, the most secure... and happy children we have seen are those who have not been weaned before their time.

Encouraging autonomy and teaching children how to be independent is a very important life lesson. It is the role of parents to teach a child the skills he needs to care for himself, whether that be cooking, laundry, or changing a spare tire. As Huggins (2007) writes:

It is not our job as parents simply to take care of children, but to help them learn how to take care of themselves. So, rather than fretting over toilet training or weaning in the toddler years -- these things which will take care of themselves -- it is more constructive to help children learn to do the things they want and need to do.

But I want my baby to become independent.

And breastfeeding makes the toddler dependent? Don't believe it. The child who breastfeeds until he weans himself (usually from 2 to 4 years), is generally more independent, and, perhaps more importantly, more secure in his independence. He has received comfort and security from the breast, until he is ready to make the step himself to stop. And when he makes that step himself, he knows he has achieved something, he knows he has moved ahead. It is a milestone in his life.




Well, I think that's all I will share for now.