Small hijack question please? What is a Cheerio? They have been mentioned about 5 times in this thread now. If you ask for a Cherrio in NZ you will get a small red skinned cocktail sausage. Yes, kids love em, but I’m thinking these are not the cheerios that people are talking about.
Sorry for the badly placed question.
Cheerios are a breakfast cereal, main ingredient is oat flour, and they’re shaped like little o’s. They’re crunchy, tasty, and just about the right size for little fingers to grab.
Thank you. 
More on topic I breast fed my chap until he was about 14 mths old, then due to family circumstances, he met bottles and gave up all by himself. If he had wanted to go longer he could have. When babies feed from the breast they are eating and should be allowed to eat anywhere anyone else can eat.
I won’t talk about toilet training because I had a poo phobic child. He was wee-trained at 2 but still asked a nappy for poo until he was about 3 and a half. It never bothered me. There are not many 5 yr olds starting school wearing nappies (or breast feeding) they work out when they are ready for things. Why make it more dramatic then it has to be?
Why is it rude to look at a breastfeeding woman?
Exactly! Ok don’t gawk but looking isn’t rude. We all look around a resturant when we are eating (and sometimes make value judgments) but looking isn’t rude.
Who said you’re not allowed to look? You’ve got eyes, that’s what they’re for, to look at the world around you. Just don’t act like a grinning, staring neanderthal or worse, a kneejerking cro-magnon who starts grunting “Boob, bad bad bad” until mom and baby are ordered to eat in a tent, a filthy public restroom or to leave. That’s all anyone asks.
Aah, but that’s really the issue for Starbucks, you see. If they allow people to eat from breasts then they’d have to allow them to eat other foods that aren’t starbucks products. Next thing you know, people will be sitting there with 50c cups of coffee, getting that Seattle cafe culture for free…disgusting! So they’ll stomp on the easy “outside food” targets first. I’d see the multiplexes doing the same thing with there “only food bought on the premises may be consumed here” schtick. Makes perfect sense :dubious:
FTR, I’m all for breast-feeding in public, although MrsDibble has indicated she’s more likely to express some before going out, if we know we’ll be out for the feed. But she 's the shy type… others, not so much, and more power to them.
Well I wish her good luck with expressing. I expressed all day when the child was 4 weeks old so we could have a baby sitter and go to the movies. I decided to do a trial run with the bottle before we left. Well we ended up staying home and watching a video. This was a child that was not taking any replacment.
You can express till the cows come home but some babies will only accept it from the original container. That container is very portable.
Starbucks has a point if someone brings in food they bought elsewhere. Boobs don’t count though…mothers rarely charge.
Ok, Chotii, I can respect that answer (don’t agree, but there are a zillion ways to raise children, and you wouldn’t agree with mine either)… next question. If a woman has a five year old that still breastfeeds, is it still appropriate to breastfeed that child in Starbucks?
Nycea - children all over the world potty train early. They also live in very different cultures - some are carried more extensively than practical for American moms (although some Moms here do attachment parenting and do wear their kids a lot). Some are put to work at the age of three or four. They often live in much tighter quarters, making the potty more accessible. A friend adopted a potty trained one year old from Eastern Europe - the manner in which she was trained was she was tied to the potty chair every day three or four times a day and not let go until she “produced” from the time she was three months.
There seems to be a sweet spot for early training - i.e. kids CAN learn early (given the right incentive - if that is Mom’s time or being tied to the potty or something else), but if they don’t learn early, it often becomes mixed up in the development of their individuality - and that can throw a wrench in the works. I think that is what happens here in the States, since we don’t have a culture of early training (for a lot of reasons), we tend to start to work on it at about the “individuality” stage of development - setting ourselves up for, in some cases, a significant delay. I also noticed a significant difference in the quality of poop my kids had as they moved from diapers to potty consistantly…Seems that their poop was still very soft and babyish when they had difficulty using the potty - and firmed up about the time they got comfortable with it. Don’t know if it was diet (don’t think so, we didn’t change anything) or a physiological maturity, or maybe just my kids.
But it isn’t that big a deal - a two and a half year old changes their own pull ups (you need to take care of the stinky ones, but that is usually once a day or so).
OT:
Actually…Puting a child in cloth diapers or underwear does give them the valuable feedback of what happens when they don’t use the toilet and it can help accelerate the process. Each child has their own schedule but modern diapers can interfere with this as it removes the sensation of being wet.
Just though I’d throw that it.
[/QUOTE]
apologies for the typos in the above post!
On the BF thing: Our first decided he was done with the breast at 10 months. My wife had a very hard time with this as she just wasn’t ready. Our 8 month old seems like she might go for longer but there are signs that breastfeeding is becoming more of a distraction than something she needs so we’ll see how it goes.
An off-topic question for Chotii- and please don’t think I am judging you in any way: but I am curious as to why (according to your posts anyway) you don’t use the normal word “breasts” when speaking to your children? We know another couple who refuse to use words like penis, vagina, breasts, etc with their children and instead always use euphemisms. I never really understood why so I always assumed it was embarassment but I never had the guts to ask and get the real reason.
I think women should be allowed to breastfeed in public. I think they should be decreet. I think that if someone looks, the mom should not get offended.
I breastfed my kids and I was discreet, but I didn’t do much of it in public. That was because it was difficult for me to do it comfortably (physically, not emotionally). My kids were all big babies* and sitting in a regular restaurant-type chair to nurse was just NOT comfy. So I took them to more private locations where, even though there weren’t really any more comfortable places to sit, at least I wasn’t making a spectacle out of myself with all the shifting and contorting! This is a big reason that I agree that nursing mothers should be provided with a place to nurse. It is simple more comfortable for mother and child if they have a nice padded rocking chair or a soft couch to sit in while feeding.
And when I say discreet, I don’t mean covered from head to foot in blankets (though there are some really nice blankets designed solely for the purpose of nursing babies). I was able to nurse quite nicely with my shirt covering the top portion of my breast and the baby covering the rest, and no one was made uncomfortable. And to get offended when and if someone looks is simply stupid. Reminds me of the times my Dad would see an obviously braless woman in town and would get a “you dirty old man!” look when he noticed it. The simple fact of the matter is, if you don’t want someone looking, don’t show it. Because human nature dicatates that if a breast, butt, or anything else like that is hanging out, WE WILL LOOK!! And that goes for male or female! If a man is wearing pants so tight that his package stands out like a pair of socks in his BVD’s, I AM going to look–sorry!
*They ranged in weight from 8 lbs 15.5 oz-12 lbs 2.25 oz
I looked into the infant potty training thing, thinking, “What a cool idea!” Well, as far as I could tell, it isn’t training the child, it’s training the caretaker. If that works for you, fantastic, but don’t pretend that it is equivalent to the child recognizing the urge to go, and being able to control it until reaching the toilet. I’m sure some children are psychologically and phsyically capable of all that around 2, but some may need to get closer to 4 before they get it all coordinated. Before they are about 18 months, they don’t even have self-awareness, for goodness sake!
One thing you learn as a parent, is that each child has her own individual maturation schedule, and there is a very wide area that is classed as “normal.” That goes for walking, talking, climbing, eating, potty training, and breastfeeding.
It’s interesting to me that information about toilet training in other cultures and countries is seen as a laudable thing and held up as a measure for Doper parents to think about in reframing their attitudes about potty-training.
But facts about breastfeeding traditions worldwide aren’t seen as valid?
This sort of selectivity–celebrating information which suppports your views, while ignoring similar information about another issue which suggests your attitudes about it might be flawed or unusual… Well, that’s not “fighting ignorance” is it?
If toddlers in China have split pants that allow them to squat on the street and take a crap, that’s something to tell all parents. But if moms in Botswana nurse until the age of 5–well now, that’s just weird.
CrankyAsAnOldMan, you see, only the foreign practices which dovetail with our preconceived notions are laudable. If it’s something like infant toilet training, which pushes kids to be independent and get out of their busy parents’ hair, it’s interesting and useful. If it’s something that promotes attachment, like cosleeping or extended nursing, it’s bizarre and possibly harmful to children!
I’m not talking about anyone in this thread, but honestly, it seems like many Americans would be happy if their five year olds got jobs and moved to their own apartments.
Well…have them on solids at 4 months, potty-trained at a year, speaking fluently by 18 months, reading at 2…having a job by 5 and staying the hell out of mommy’s way so she can have her own life and her own body and her own schedule seems perfectly within the realm of reasonable behavior for both a child AND its parent.
…what?
Last time I went to starbucks, I’m pretty sure all the customers and staff there were naked underneath their clothes - it was disgusting.
“indigenous breastfeeding” Google search
For 3 million years we as a species had arguably no visceral reaction to the breastfeeding of an infant. This thread illustrates a “new” (and disturbing, imho) world view that is only a couple thousand years old.
But if folks aren’t even going to consider foreign practices, it will be an even larger leap for them to make to look at indigenous peoples…
:rolleyes: 
:smack: That should read “species group”
I meant that it is generally considered rude to stare at any stranger in a public place. People seemed to be suggesting that they would be subjected to the prolonged spectacle of a nursing mother, when, in fact, unless they purposely prolong it, they would only give her a glance or two, just as they would with anyone else.