La Leche League is basically an agnostic organization. Why, then, do I occupy time on a Catholic blog to talk about it? Well, for one thing, it’s my blog. For another, what LLL teaches makes so much sense within a Catholic construct. Long-term breastfeeding as the baby needs it is a key component to natural family planning, via the supression of female fertility – it creates natural child spacing. When baby #1 is done with the breast, then it’s time for #2 to come along (although in our current society it is very difficult to do totally ecological breastfeeding.)

One really cool thing about being around a bunch of LLL families is that you don’t see them slapping their kids around, yelling at them, etc. While LLL doesn’t officially teach attachment parenting, they do talk about “loving guidance,” which essentially flies in the face of any of the baby training methods out there. Rather than tempt the child to grab something and then whack them when they do, there are many better ways to deal with it that won’t teach the child to hit people and things. There’s a degree of pleasantness that you don’t get over at Wal-Mart in the checkout line. Kids are everywhere but there’s something different.

On Friday, I attended 2 of the 3 available sessions, because the third one was right through Caroline’s nap time. I’ll speak about one here – “Let’s Get Together – Parents as Partners.” This one was run by a husband and wife, Bryan and Tammy Veatch. Tammy’s one of the regional accreditation folks in the organization. The main point of the session was focused on dealing with disagreements between husband and wife with regard to raising the kids. The example they brought up was in deciding whether to home-school their kids. Tammy wanted to home school, Bryan (a public school teacher) wanted to put the kids in private school. They basically tried one way and then the other…and they are public-schooling them now.

We headed back to the cabin for lunch, and I hung out and read while my daughter napped. My wife headed to the next session. When the munchkin awoke, we had a snack and then went for a walk along the lake trail, winding up at the primitive campsites. Along the way I was asked to throw various sticks, rocks, and caterpillars into the lake. We played on the playground a few minutes and then headed back to the cabin, connecting with my wife shortly after.