Weaning

Weaning is a very delicate process, important for the whole of a child’s life. It is not a problem of nourishment, but of the spirit. This side of the problem is all but neglected. We must be careful to substitute some other kind of pleasure to take the place of the original pleasure of the mother’s breast. The process of weaning can be carried out so that the child himself, with a little encouragement, will choose a new and wider form of pleasure, and so pass lightly through this, the most intense, emotional experience of life. If the change, when its time comes, is violently made, desire will not go forwards to new fields and to wider experience of mind, but backwards to some substitute pleasure of the same type as the one to be surrendered. Thumb-sucking, an obvious substitute, is the commonest.