to think that allowing a six year old to suck her mothers breasts when she has NOT been breast feeding for years is wrong?

[toffetwist]

I have a friend. Who recently told me that she lets her 6 year old child suck her breasts. She is not breast feeding her and has not for years.

I am disturbed. Am I right to be? What do I do?

What's the difference between never stopping and allowing a child to restart? Or is it for the mothers benefit?

I wouldn't use a dummy as a tool, I bet there are things I do do that others wouldn't agree with. What we choose as tools are our own business unless we are choosing to harm our child. Yucky is not harm.

precisely TBM
This gets to the crux of it.
If the OP had been 'my freakoid friend has been giving babyfood (another 'tool') to her six year old', would it really have got such a freaked out response? or would most of us have said, well, not my tool of choice, but her family, her rules?

I do think that the unspoken implication that there is something sexually abusive in extended bf (or anything that acknowledges that a bf'd child's relationship with the mother's breasts doesn't end at an arbtitrary point) says a huge amount about society's ambivalence towards motherhood, children, and particularly about who 'owns' the female body (herself? her husband? her child?)

Well the problem here is we do not know the intent we can only speculate.

Indeed Cola.

The OP certainly hasn't come back to enlighten us.

I think it's very odd and quite disturbing. As an adult, I think the child will feel uncomfortable remembering this time. There are other, more appropriate ways to counsel children through a divorce.

I would ask the friend a few more questions about it, embarrassing though it will be for you both, and then decide whether this is dangerously inappropriate behaviour.

This is not about extended BF. Child is not being breastfed.

Rather than 'my freakoid friend gives baby food to 6 yr old', imagine 'my freakoid friend gives a dummy to 6 yr old who didn't have one for the past 4 yrs'.

Would you also say 'her family her rules' or can we agree that giving a dummy to a 6 yr old after years without is just absurd?

Kara - can you articulate why you find it disturbing? Is it possible you are projecting your own disturbance onto the child?

I don't see why a child who has not been taught that his or her mother's breasts are taboo, should look back on this from adulthood with any particularly negative feelings.

Many of us are not, after all, horrified by the sight of our parents naked, despite the fact that nakedness can be associated with sex. We can make the distinction between the two 'versions' of naked, and an adult child can make the distinction between 'sexual' breasts and 'feeding/comforting' breasts.

yes, coteD, I would completely say her family her rules re the dummy.

Nothing is absurd, in the matter of what comforts a child - let's please remember that a 6 year old is very much still a child.

Regarding my previous point about nakedness - it's a good analogy for the general soundness of making as few taboos as possible for children.

Those of us who were brought up without the naked taboo I suspect feel more at ease with our own bodies as well as those of others.

Yep - i would think that if a child had asked for their dummy back during a stressful time (in a situation where they had had a dummy previously and found comfort from it) and the mother was happy to give the dummy back, then i wouldn't find that weird or icky at all, i'm afraid.

Can't believe we got this far without someone mentioning bitty though. That's got to be a record?!

We haven't UD.
A few posts from the most recent..

no child would ask for a dummy after 4 years.

I know children who use dummies after a longer gap. I find them icky in the first place but I would still see it as the mothers decision.

I still don't see why it's OK to nurse a child till 7 but not stop and restart.

Oh yeah VS.

Oh well. That's still a while though, eh?

Onebat - Firstly let me just point out that there is a world of difference between a child of six (or any age) seeing his/her paretns naked, and sucking at his/her mother's breasts. Anyone who can't make that distinction is a little odd imho.

When the op spoke about bringing it up with the child's mother she intimated that the mother was embarrassed, thereby revealing that she knows it's not normal behaviour.

Call me an old prude but if I had a memory of sucking my mother's non-lactating breasts at the age of six, I would think a) why the hell was she letting me do that? b) why did I want to do it? I wouldn't be comfortable with the memory - can you honestly say you would be?

What is thread about? bf, age, security, abuse, depends where you sit, but, IMO it is most probably about a child regressing, or about a mother regressing going back to a time when she felt safe and loved, not in the throws of a divorce.

No need to apologize onebatmother. I'm the one who misunderstood

I agree with most of what you said - a 'child's sexuality develops through their childhood', there is a 'potential link' between a 6 yr old sucking on mum's breasts and her 'developing sexuality', etc.

Where we differ is you are wary of 'repressing' the child's wish to return to sucking breasts or wearing nappies. And I say diverting child's attention to a more age-appropriate comforting tool does not have to be 'repressive'.

My two didn't have dummies and stopped breastfeeding when they were truly babies, but we have had stressful times, in the last few years (dh and I seperated when they were 4 and 5) and if they had asked for something that they last found comforting many years ago, then I might say yes as a one off (but only to a very limited range of things - I certainly wouldn't go out and by a dummy for example), but after that I would say no, I am afraid. I wouldn't think it yukky, just inappropriate. Likewise a bottle. It's too far back, and I don't think it helpful to encourage children to be babies when they are stressed. There are other ways to comfort a child, and I think at 6 they centre around talking, and helping them to cope with their world. The other scenarios around extended breast feeding to a later date (so it's not so long ago), or offering because a younger sibling is nursing are in my view completely different.

And I do think there is something about the mother's emotional state here. I know that when dh and I were going through very difficult times I did want to hold and love my children in a completely different way. Some of that was totally about having some intimacy and at times I did have to stop because I realised it was about my own needs, totally unsexual (I think just basic contact, and somebody loves me stuff), but probably still not the right thing to do.

I wasn't breastfed, Karathrace, so I can't comment on that from a personal perspective.

But why a world of difference?

"no child would ask for a dummy after 4 years."
Is that so, Twelvelegs.

cote - i hear you re 'doesn't have to be repressive' - but you also suggest that there is something, at the very least, a bit suspect about not doing so - and we disagree on that.

TBH this is not something that I have hugely strong feelings about, since it is probably not a regular or common occurence. I'm arguing more with the assumptions that I see behind the Anti position, which I suspect would stand were the girl say, 3.

'i hear you'
someone give me a heads up

Yes, that is so. No child would seriously ask for a dummy after 4 years and find it comforting unless, at a push, they are regressing and the parent is pretty useless in assisting a child adapt to a new sibling.
If my 6 year old asked for a dummy I would think I had failed him in some way that he had not moved on in finding other things to comfort him.

you're talking with great certainty there, Twelvelegs, about the many, many children in the world who are not your own.

But I like 'that is so.' Its like the Voice of God, rather, isn't it.

You're question was 'Is that so?'.