Picture a Leader: Leaders Focus
on Accreditation
Alice Edwards
LLLI Education Campaign Coordinator
From: LEAVEN, Vol. 35 No. 5, October 1999-November 1999, pp. 111-112
LLL Leaders around the world
are focused on the importance of their role in the accreditation process.
Thanks for sending me the articles you've written, workshops you've
developed, translations you've done, as well as your thoughts about
the 1998 accreditation policies. Thanks for taking advantage of the
opportunities you've had this year to gather and talk with other Leaders
in your communities, at the International Conference in Florida and
via email. Thanks for accessing ideas shared by Leaders around the world
on the EC Web page. Thanks for sharing what you've learned as you've
used the 1998 accreditation policies with potential Applicants. This
is a great conversation! Here are a few thoughts that Leaders have shared
with me that explore the theme expressed in the LLLI Prerequisites to
Applying for Leadership-Guidelines for Leaders:
Leaders are a diverse
group of women representing a broad spectrum of cultures, bound together
by a common philosophy and a mother-to-mother approach to providing
breastfeeding help.
Creative Ways Mothers Have
Found to Avoid Separation from Their Babies.
We all know Group members
who have made tough choices in order to be available to meet their babies'
needs. We need to highlight these situations a lot. We have a long-time
Group member who is the girl's basketball and volleyball coach for a
small-town high school. She brought her son along to practices and games
in his sling. There was always a girl not on the court who was more
than happy to help entertain him and the mother could take him and nurse
him whenever he wanted. I like to use her story as an illustration of
how a need to work does not always mean a need to separate from the
baby for some mothers who are creative and lucky.
Anne Easterday,
Nebraska USA
A Leader Who Experienced
Separation from a Young Baby
In South Africa, after the
birth of my first child, Robbie, who is now five years old, I decided
not to go back to my full-time job, but when he was five months old
I received the offer of a part-time teaching job that seemed too good
to be true. Robbie stayed with a day mother near the school where I
taught and I would go and nurse him, as he wasn't interested in bottles
of expressed milk. After three months, I decided not to continue working,
as Robbie wasn't happy at the day care mother. My Leaders apparently
had no hesitation in recommending me for leadership and I was clear
in my history about this issue. My co-Leader in South Africa was also
accredited even though she had worked one morning a week away from her
son since he was about seven months old. At this point in time we are
both full-time homeschooling mothers.
When I moved to the US, I
met a mother who was interested in leadership, but had worked for a
couple of months until she realized that her baby needed her and she
then left her job. She was told that she was not a candidate for leadership
at this stage because of her work history. When I questioned the Leader
who said this, I was told that the LAD worldwide had the same standards,
a statement that was not borne out by my experience.
I believe that 99 percent
of women who become Leaders will, like my friend and me, grow closer
to LLLI philosophy, not away from it. And that goes for the other concepts
as well.
Rina Groeneveld,
Germany
A New Experience Brought
a New Perspective
I had lived in a bubble of
white, middle class stay-at-home mothers the whole time I lived in Illinois.
I lived in a primarily white, middle class town of 47,000. We had three
active LLL Groups in our town, two of which held daytime meetings. These
mothers were not working. In all that time I met one mother who worked.
She was a zookeeper who could not go to her baby while she was at work.
This was my first example of a baby reverse-cycle feeding. He nursed
half the night! There was also a mother whose baby was born while she
was finishing nursing school. She took her baby with her to classes
as much as possible. She did become a Leader.
Moving transformed me. Now
the two small towns and surrounding area had a population of about 20,000.
Not only did I begin to meet mothers who regularly planned to go back
to work, I met single moms, mothers struggling with significant others
who weren't all that significant or who were irresponsible and abusive.
Yes, all this in an exclusive rural college town where many rich people
have chosen to live staying connected to the big city by computers and
fax machines.
I quickly was forced to examine
very carefully everything that came out of my mouth. Was it offensive,
insulting, uncaring, exclusive? Did it indicate a disregard for others'
circumstances? Some things that had become so automatic in Illinois
caught me up short. As I tried to present an LLL concept I found myself
stumbling over words that I'd said time and again as I began to realize
they were excluding some of the mothers at the meeting. Within a year
I had honed my brain to be able to say what I needed to say without
unintentionally excluding anyone.
I knew all about accepting
mothers where they were and thought I had been good at it. All I had
become good at was accepting the individual differences of some stay-at-home
mothers. Now I have come face-to-face with many other circumstances
and have had to accept all kinds and manners of breastfeeding. Over
and over again in the beginning of my time here I had to remind myself
of the difference between what was expected of Leaders versus what many
mothers were experiencing.
I have come to know many
mothers who are very attached to their babies and their babies to them.
None of that means I would want to go back and change the way I mothered
my children when they were young.
I don't think the concept
of "the baby's need for the mother is as intense as his need for
food" is going to change. That stands for something very real.
But I do think we've ignored how significant other people can be in
the baby's life and how attached the baby can be to others. Burton White
found that the baby's grandparents are also capable of investing tremendous
love in a grandchild. My third-born child has very strong attachments
and preferences for his brother or sister doing particular things in
his life, and rejects my doing these things with/for him! As our family
grew I had to adapt to the fact that others in my baby's life were very
dear to him and fulfilled some of his needs.
Some mothers in my Group
worked twelve-hour shifts and did have their babies at a caretaker's.
But they spent a good bit of time when not at work nursing to bring
up their milk supplies and reveling in their relationship with their
babies. I guess I'm trying to say that unless some Leaders have experienced
what I have and seen how attached these mother-baby couples can be,
they may not be aware that mothers and babies can have separations and
still thrive emotionally.
Mardrey Swenson,
New Hampshire USA
An Unexpected Benefit from
LLL's 1999 Focus on Accreditation
Today I met a woman, for
the second time, who will probably become my future co-Leader. I am
thrilled at the prospect but disappointed in myself for not recognizing
this possibility nine months ago when we first met! She attended my
Group meeting last year; she was pregnant and had a three-year-old.
I have not seen her since then, until today, when she arrived with her
six-month-old and now four-year-old and asked, "Just what is involved
in becoming a Leader?" It seems she has lived in two different
states and been involved with LLL each time. Both of her previous Leaders
had approached her about leadership just as she was about to move. She
visited my Group when she first moved to town but then stayed away for
nine months!
What a difference it would
have made if I had called her after that first meeting and gotten to
know her better! Instead of tearing my hair out all these months, I
could have been enjoying a new friend and a Group Librarian! You can
bet I am going to call every newcomer who attends my meetings from now
on. As I watch this mother interact with other mothers and share her
enjoyment of mothering with the Group and her baby, I am so grateful
for this second chance to "picture a Leader." I wonder how
many potential Leaders have "gotten away" because I did not
take the time to get to know them better?
Carroll Beckham,
North Carolina USA
About LLLI Philosophy
LLLI philosophy states, "Mothering
through breastfeeding is the most natural and effective way of understanding
and satisfying the needs of the baby" and "In the early years
the baby has an intense need to be with his mother which is as basic
as his need for food." It is this philosophy of mothering through
breastfeeding that defines La Leche League. Mothering through breastfeeding
requires mother's availability to her baby to meet his needs for food
and comfort, as well as time to learn how to mother her unique baby.
It requires an understanding of the development of her baby and a respect
for that developmental process. Our philosophy does not mandate full-time,
at-home mothering as the only way to meet baby's needs, but it does
suggest some flexibility in a mother's work situation as well as an
intense desire on the part of the mother to respond to her baby's needs
not fit the baby's needs into the pattern of her day.
We also recognize that babies
grow and develop at different rates and that their needs change over
time. We know that baby's need for mother lessens in intensity during
the early years and that "loving others" can meet some of
the baby's needs as he moves past those tender early months. The ability
to separate from mother is a necessary part of growing up which develops
at different times in different babies.
People often say La Leche
League is an advocate for the baby. To me it is more important and respectful
for La Leche League to be the advocate for mothering through breastfeeding.
We help a mother breastfeed and learn about her baby and his needs,
so she can develop an understanding of her child as only a mother can
and then make decisions based on that knowledge, not society's expectations
of her.
When considering a mother
for leadership, if that mother has experienced separation from her baby,
consider this mother's experience in the context of LLLI philosophy.
Consider the respect she demonstrates for the natural progression of
the baby's ability to separate from mother. Look at the choices she
has made and how she has progressed as a mother learning to meet the
needs of her baby. This is how we can identify mothers who, as Leaders,
will transmit the philosophy of the organization to the next generation
of mothers.
Cindy Smith, Chairman
LLLI Board of Directors
COMMUNIQUE #8 June, 1999
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:31:17 UTC 2007.
