When I'm with little kids I feel very tall. When I'm with adults I feel very short. (Much of the time) When I drive in the slow lane I want to zoom around the pokey people, and when I'm in the fast lane I feel I'm about to be run over. I'm a middle-of-the-roader. I guess. It's like parenting. When I'm with other moms from the MOMS Club, I feel like a radical, with extended nursing, co-sleeping, attachment parenting....yet when I'm with La Leche Leaguers or Waldorf parents I feel more mainstream! I went to a woman's house recently with my darling daughter (dd). She commented on how my dd "seems big to be nursing". Her eyes got huge when I informed her that a friend of mine is nursing an almost five-year-old. Then at the Waldorf parent/child class the other day when I asked the teacher if it would be ok to nurse "dd" in class, she nodded at me as if it was absolutely ok, no discussion necessary. I soon found out that was the case, when another mom was nursing her son, who she had told me earlier was 22 months. I guess like anything it's about finding like-minded people to surround yourself with, so that you feel "normal". Isn't that what we all want? To feel "normal"? After being at the playdate with the surprised woman, I decided that I needed to surround myself with one group of similar moms: those who are relatively close to my age. (The woman is 11 years my junior...) I have since planned a playdate at my home for 30+ year-old moms. That certainly doesn't mean they'll be similar in their views on parenting necessarily, but it's one way of gathering one type of similar people. Perhaps within that group I'll find some who have more in common with me, etc. I wonder if any of them subsist on Oreo cookies...
