Weaning Is an Emotional Struggle

Among the problems that face the mother in the first year of her child's life is a wearisome one: the problem of weaning the child. The important thing is that weaning is one of the hardest matters that stand in the child's way, and one that disappoints his hopes in his mother and his future. It is fitting, then, that every mother understand this important step in her child's life.

What are the reasons that make weaning so difficult, for mother and child alike? To answer this you must know, O mother, the importance of nursing and sucking for the child.

The child is born with an inclination to suck, and this inclination is necessary to his life. Experiments have shown that the child finds comfort and pleasure at his feeding time, and that his need for this is as important as his need for the food itself. Experiments have likewise shown that the child who finishes his feeding quickly is usually quicker to suck his thumb than children who take their time over their feeding. Artificial pacifiers help the child to satisfy his desire for sucking, and so spare him sucking his thumb.

Thus we find that if the child is forced to give up the bottle or the breast before his need for sucking is satisfied, he rebels and cries and hastens to suck the cover, or his thumb, or his tongue instead.

Children differ as to the age at which you can wean them: some are ready for weaning near the end of the first year, without any trouble or annoyance; others violently resist any attempt at weaning until the age of two. But this innate desire lessens as the child advances in age, and once he reaches an age

that fits him for weaning, the mother finds the task extremely easy.

When your child is in his seventh or eighth month, offer him a little milk in a mug or a cup; the ordinary child gradually learns to take his milk in this way. This cup may be given daily for months while the child still nurses from the bottle or the breast, and his acceptance of the cup increases with time, as his desire for sucking begins to dissolve. This may happen in his eleventh month, for instance, or as late as the second year. Most children can drink their milk from the cup or the glass before the age of two, even if some of them insist on the bottle. And when he begins to drink the equivalent of his fill from the cup, it is to be understood from this that the child is capable of being weaned without his hopes being disappointed or his being made to suffer.

In some cases of a child's upbringing it is not advisable to impose weaning by force, for imposing it is sometimes harmful, even if its success is outwardly apparent. Nor should the mother expect the child to submit to weaning when he is in a state of weakness or illness, or in the teething stage.

It is most necessary that the child grow up believing that his mother loves him and cares for him, and that he can depend upon her for his primary needs. Rapid weaning, imposed at too early an age, weakens this bond between the child and his mother, and exposes the child to complexes that may have grave consequences, or establishes in him bad habits which it will afterward be among the hardest of things to uproot — as we noted in the case of thumb-sucking, or sucking the blanket, and the like.

This is what you should remember, madam, when you set about weaning your child. Take him with gentleness and long patience, and lavish upon him your tenderness and your love, for his need of this love is above his need of the food itself. Remember this always.