It’s too soon for toilet training — in my house, that is. My toddling, teething baby starts his second year next month (meaning he turns 1). Even as bright and amazing as he is, he won’t be making deposits in the toilet any time soon. So I was a little ambitious to have suggested it as a topic for this week.

If you’re interested, however, check out www.3daypottytraining.com, as I plan to do. My husband — my husband! — has been talking about this 3-day toilet-training method for months now. I’m excited to see what it’s about and will be more excited if it works. I’ll write about it when we’re ready.

Today, then, I’ll turn my thoughts to more pleasant smells and grace you with a “potpourri” column. Do you like potpourri — those packages of random objects doused in perfume, tossed together in a basket and set out in strategic places in your house? (My expensive potpourri, an annual gift from my mother, graces the back of the toilet.)

So a “potpourri column” is this: Random thoughts tossed together here — a little of this, a little of that. Hopefully it will blend well.



I WAS STANDING IN the teacher’s store perusing bulletin board borders when my phone rang. The mother on the other end had a question I get fairly often, one I, myself, asked years ago as a new mother with a 6-month-old nurser.

The baby, she said, is starting to bite. You know, like when the baby’s nursing?

Ouch.

When that first happened to me eight years ago, it was an instant, “Oh-no-you-don’t!” and a bee-line toward weaning. Turns out my freaking out — I instinctively broke the latch and flicked the baby’s cheek — was a sure way to nip it in the bud (so to speak).

I told this sweet mom to do what a cat would do to her kittens, an analogy I once read: Cuff the baby. OK, that sounds awful, I know. Really, I suggested she gently but firmly say, “No” and follow with some sort of harmless but painful action like the cheek flick.

For some babies, just their mothers’ stern voice — her displeasure — is enough. For others, like my sons, apparently, a little pain associated with the action is necessary.

I went on to nurse my first son until he was 21 months; my daughter for three years; and this one’s still voracious — but not biting — about it.

For a more professional opinion (one that does NOT include the painful consequence), check out what the Dr. Sears clan says at www.askdrsears.com/topics/breastfeeding/common-problems/bites-breast.



SWITCHING TOPICS ENTIRELY — remember, this is potpourri day — I might actually reference the Scriptures here. I’m not trying to proselytize or preach, mind you. That would be other people, actually, who love to quote — or misquote — this verse.

They love to admonish others with this: “Don’t judge.”

Don’t judge? Really?

Funny, but the same man who’s quoted as saying that later tells his listeners precisely to judge and tells them how to do it: logically. As he says, we judge a tree by its fruits, right? If the fruits are luscious, we likely have a healthy tree. If they’re not, something might be wrong with the tree.

That’s just fact.

Here’s my point. Humans judge all the time. When to apply the brakes as you near a stop sign? That’s a judgment call. Every time we make a decision, we have, by default, made some kind of judgment.

The word “judge” does not have to be synonymous — as many people try to make it — with being critical or with condemning something or someone. To judge, then, is simply to assess something and draw a conclusion that, often but not always, leads to action.

I look at the stop sign and quickly assess my speed, road conditions, maybe the worthiness of the vehicle I’m driving, and *judge* when a good time to apply the brakes would be.

We are all entitled — even required to have, I would say — judgments or conclusions.

Living demands it.

So, by all means, I hope you’re judging and teaching your children to judge also. It’s *how to* that’s the question.

When read and understood in context, the speaker in that verse seems to be talking about not being a *hypocrite,* which is an entirely different matter. “Don’t judge,” he says, “unless you’re prepared to be judged in the same measure.”

Hypocrisy is, by most anyone’s assessment, an ugly character trait — one to avoid. So don’t judge someone or something by a standard to which you, yourself, do not adhere.

I have learned recently, too, that sometimes I go from assessment (“judgment”) to criticism far too quickly. I’m working on it. But may I never “don’t judge” if that means I’m not to draw logical, reasonable conclusions.

There you have it.



Goshen News columnist Stephanie Price is a wife, mother, teacher, childbirth educator, midwife’s assistant and nursing student living in Union, Mich. Contact her at wholefamily@goshennews.com or 269-641-7249.