Discrimination...

[mandalynnne]

You definitely handled it better than I would have. I get very defensive in situations like that. As far as personal experience, I've had no negative ones, but lots of stares.

[Ashwin'sMommy]

Wow - for a homeschooling co-op this is waaaay crazy! Do you have any other options for a coop?

Tara

Originally Posted by milkmommy I'll spill the entire story, but it's long! I took my girls to a local homeschooling co-op day. It's a newly formed co-op and it was the first day of classes. I dropped them off at their class and went to the office area to fill out liability forms and to pay. After I paid, I was shown the nursery where I was told I could play with my baby (19 months). It was a room full of preschoolers with their Mamas, but I noticed a large bag of duplo blocks in the corner so I took Elena on over to play with them. We had our back turned to the mothers who had the children in a circle. Elena asked to nurse. I am a very discreet nurser, especially in public. Not that I feel that I have to be, but it's just the way I am. A mother went storming out of the room and went and told the director that my "doing that" was offending her and asked her to ask me to leave or to cover up! So, the director comes in and tells me that I'm offending somebody and she did proceed to ask me to leave or cover up. I told her I wouldn't do that, but I would take my money back, and I was appalled that their organization would blatantly disregard the state law that I'm protected under. She asked me how she could make the problem better. I told her it wasn't my problem. I HAD NO PROBLEM. So, I went to sit in my car because class was almost over and I didn't want to pull the girls and have them find out how upset I was. Meanwhile, the director comes out to my van and tells me that they've enstated a policy that a breastfeeding mother can nurse where-ever she wants to (uh, the law already says that--duh!). Anyway, she asks me to stay, apologizes, yada, yada. I'm on the fence. Should I go back? And to top it all off (if you get this far), the "offended" mother confronted ME outside afterwards!! She says, "I thought we could be adults about this". Um, hello!! I'm not the one who told on somebody else for nurturing their child!! I took the opportunity to educate her on the benefits and importance of breastfeeding. But in the end, she still refused to call it anything other than "that". She kept saying, "when you do that to your child" and "I've never dealt with anybody who has done that". I asked her if we could call it breastfeeding and she refused!! It was just a bad day in my neighborhood. If you managed to get this far, thanks for reading. This truly is a VERY shortened version of what took place. Melissa