We talked last week about how complicated it can sometimes be to defend our decision to breastfeed because, in the face of attacks, teasing or ignorant comments, reliable information is usually not respected or internalized by our interlocutor as a attack your options.
So we can also use other strategies to defend our prolonged breastfeeding, depending on the situation and the desired effect.
Deaf ears
“If you can't get anything out of your tit". Ok, yes, we can also make a silly face and say “Yes Yes”While you continue breastfeeding the same and give great results.
There are those who prefer to take off their tits and let loose a stream of milk, a good demonstration that they are wrong, but to nod as if they were talking about the weather and keep doing the same thing is a way to avoid confrontations and imply how little we are interested in those opinions. Turn a deaf ear, like who hears rain.
The truth is that in the end, it is much easier to avoid confrontation and not give information to who you know beforehand who does not want to hear it. About turn a deaf ear It can work if the people who attack our breastfeeding are not very insistent or we treat them little, but if every Sunday in the family's house they are going to make unfriendly comments, it may be necessary to decide whether to stop going or make things clear.
“Better once red than one hundred yellow”
“That boy takes the tit of vice”Says your sister-in-law smoking cigarette in her mouth in front of the babies. "Well, pass me the cigar to put it in your mouth, because you better not be able to stop smoking to continue breastfeeding at a normal age" There will be anger and surely you end up being the culprit, but there are times, in the defense, you have to apply the “Better once red than one hundred yellow”.
In short, you can tell anyone, and being thinner, that since you raise your children so differently and that you have the education of not telling him what you think about what he does, you would appreciate the same consideration. If after that it continues, you decide, or ignore them or take out the artillery.
Normally after two or three dry cuts, they usually end up leaving you for impossible and will just turn green behind your back that bothers you much less. There are people with whom it is the best solution.
“Yes, I will give it until I have a mustache". What will they tell you if you replenish that?
Assertiveness
There are more assertive ways and surely more effective in addressing these problems. Surely you explain that you make your decisions very informed. Without attacking, or getting angry, or suffering, you inform about your limits, and you can emphasize that as much as you respect their plots you will also be respected by them. You respect that I have another opinion about your upbringing but you will continue making your choices as before. The truth, without more.
If you are really interested in the subject you can pass all the documents of the World Health Organization, the Spanish Association of Pediatrics and all the scientific journals you want. When they are read, you can talk about it, but until then you are going to make your own decisions and you will talk about other topics. Inform, do not argue.
The decision is yours and science is on your side
We must mark our territory without biting, but without letting them bite us, or soon we will have them removed in our drawers or deciding on your lives.
It's simple, about your children the decision is yoursAnd, in addition, you are very sure and informed of what you are doing. If you have poise, confidence in yourself and both members of the couple you know how to create a common front facing the outside, things will improve.
There will be those who do not want to learn anything about breastfeeding even if they criticize you, there will be those who will never respect you, but, in the end, they better think that you are a witch to be treated as a girl or as a puppet. Security and confidence, knowing how to put limits on those adults who don't know them and be clear that nobody has the right to treat you badly.
I like about put limits on those adults that all the time say you have to set limits on others when they don't know how to put them on themselves.
In reality, all these tips are valid for parents in any other circumstance of raising or educating their children who face informed and respecting children, but in breastfeeding has a very solid base: as pediatrician Carlos Gónzalez states in your book A present for the whole life:
There is no limit to breastfeeding. There is no medical, nutritional or psychological reason why we must necessarily wean at a certain age.
I will develop in the next topic a summary of the advantages of prolonged breastfeeding that I hope will help you to respond to malicious comments or to be more sure of yourself when you talk about prolonged breastfeeding.
Babies and more | Does it make sense to talk about prolonged breastfeeding ?, Breastfeeding according to an anthropologist from Atapuerca, Video: prolonged breastfeeding
