Question: Is my son going to have psychological trauma if he is breastfed past the age of 4? He is 4 years old and 5 months. I am asking this in regards to my sons mom and my ex wife who is insisting on continuing to breast feed for health reasons. She doesn’t do it out in the open anymore but she will still do it around other family members and it is very hard to take. I am worried that it cannot be OK if you can remember feeding off your mothers breasts when you are an adult or a teenager.

Dr. Mark Abrahams Says...:

By the time a child reaches 5 years of age and begins kindergarten, [s]he best be weaned from breast-feeding and toilet trained. He is going to begin a socialization process in school, and if his peers discover that he is still breast-feeding, there are going to be consequences that will follow him through grade school, and possibly beyond. Bullying can most definitely be traumatic, even at a very early age! I cannot stress this strongly enough. I happen to have recently re-connected with someone whom I was friends with as a young child. He is a psychologist today. But I remember teasing him myself when he ate lunch at my house and requested that my mother warm his milk at age 5 or 6!

The immune system of your son is no longer in need of antibodies from his mother's milk. The further concern is that your ex-wife refuses to relinquish a stage of her maternal process, and is exploiting your son to meet her own unhealthy emotional needs. From a psychosexual (Freudian) perspective, he is way past the Oral Stage, past the Anal Stage, and he should be into the Phallic Stage (age 3-6), where the Oedipal Complex develops. Here, the male child wants to possess the mother in competition with the father. If the father is absent, an emotional competition is believed to have been won by the child, but as the genitals are the dominant erogenous zone in the Phallic Stage (little boys do touch themselves, and experience erections and genital pleasure), it obviously is not a healthy connection to have with his mother's breasts. This can set the stage for all manner of  psychosexual adjustment problems after he passes through the next Latency Stage and into the Genital Stage beginning with adolescence.

I did not want to lay a bunch of psychobabble on you, but your son needs to be weaned ASAP for all the above reasons. Moreover, someone whom your son's mother trusts, an older female and mother ideally, should have a serious talk with her. I would further urge that your son's mother consider counseling on this matter from a mental health professional.

Question: My 16 year old daughter wants to get a small tattoo. I am against it my wife has not yet agreed but she basically thinks it is OK and is holding out out of respect for my discomfort. We are separated. I have a feeling she will eventually fold to the pressure my daughter has been putting on her. Is a 16 year old old enough to make such a permanent decision?

Dr. Mark Abrahams Says...:

If you are asking whether a 16 year old is old enough to make permanent decisions, please understand that external voices of authority are not going to reflect what you already know in your heart-of-hearts. Also know that there are no "permanent" decisions. Tattoos can be removed by Laser or skin graft, but of course there will be cosmetic consequences. The laws in many places allow for certain decisions to be made by 16 year olds, but these laws often do not reflect the values of caring parents. For example, in Florida, a 16 year old can lawfully engage in sexual intercourse with someone up to the age of 23. Age 18 is required for relations with someone older than 23. But I digress. 

If your daughter's familial values, like not wanting to displease her father, are stronger than peer-based social values, she will put her tattoo on hold for the time being. Do not be surprised if she is unwilling to comply with your desire however. It is not so much disrespect for you as it is the overwhelming nature of adolescence, in which the primary focus is self-identity. Tattoos are not the same social indicators that they were in previous generations (e.g., drunken sailors on shore leave, convicts, and generally speaking, 'rough trade' individuals). Perhaps discuss the kind of tattoo with your daughter, where she wants to have it, and consequently, who she expects to see it. A tat that will prohibit elegant formal wear later in her life (e.g., plunging back gowns) should be pointed out to her, as well as visibility to conservative employers that may well prejudice them.

At the same time, this conflict is a foreshadowing of your daughter's legal emancipation at age 18, where she will not require parental permission to get tattoos and piercings. Choose your battles carefully, and determine how much 'ego' you want to put into this beyond the attention to details that I suggested above. At this point, Dad is going to have to begin to let go of his parental control. Whatever internalized respect your daughter has for her father is going to have to kick in. She may proceed against your wishes, and regret it later, but she is rapidly becoming an autonomous young adult. Express your wishes clearly, but temper your preference with a measure of detachment.