When I teach antenatal classes, I always send out an email afterwards with various supporting information and a link to an evaluation form on surveymonkey. This form replaced my old paper form that I would hand out at the end of the session, and I find now that although I don’t get as many responses, the ones I do get are generally more considered. People don’t tend to bother, unless they have something to say; and of course that means that quite frequently, they want to say something that isn’t comfortable for me to hear.
With the paper form, I would usually get a 90% response rate, and very rarely would any of it be useful. When they leave the session, people usually say thank you, and often a couple might remain to tell me that they found it useful or enjoyable. No-one has ever stayed behind to tell me that they didn’t like it. So in-person feedback is not useful in a learning sense, but at least makes me feel good.
Electronic feedback, usually a few days after the session, gives the respondent time to think about how they found the session. They have probably talked it over with their partner. If something bothered with them, it will still be bothering them, and I give them the opportunity to let me know about it. I suspect that the electronic feedback is skewed towards the negative; either that or I’m really not very good.
Of course I take negative feedback to heart; wouldn’t you? Sometimes I feel it is justified, but also that the element they didn’t like is justifiable; for example the complaint that I don’t answer direct questions. The first is true, as long as I have time to facilitate a discussion: I would rather the group figured out an answer for themselves, than simply sit in front and dictate to them. It’s not really the NCT way, is it? Plus, the ‘right’ answer for one family may not be the right answer for another. So take co-sleeping as an example; most parents-to-be will categorically state that they will absolutely never ever ever EVER have their baby in their own bed. Yet the statistics contradict this: 50% of parents admit to sharing a bed with their baby at least once in the first six months. So even if they think right now that it’s irrelevant and I should just tell them not to do it because that’s what FSID says, perhaps it really is worthy of some discussion? So the question comes: Why would we have the baby in bed with us? and my answer will always by: What do you think? Why do people do that? What are the benefits? What are the risks? How might it impact on breastfeeding? I answer a question with a load more questions, and it irritates the hell out of some people, but I stick by it.
Sometimes I get feedback that is justified and that I feel bad about. This has happened a couple of times recently with relation to one particular activity I do, where I get the dads-to-be to teach their partners the principles of good positioning and attachment. I show them, explain it, give them scripts and props to use, and – crucially – encourage them to stick to the script. And usually it comes across really well, because the group takes it seriously (but not too much), and pays attention when I tell them how it works. But once or twice it has completely bombed, the group of dads has been giggly or tried to ad lib, and the whole thing has been jumbled and confusing.
Inevitably, the feedback then says that I didn’t do a very good job of teaching them something as important as how to position their baby at the breast. Mums-to-be sometimes say they would have liked an opportunity to try it themselves (I try to remember to tell them that there is no point trying this with their massive bump in the way.) I am wondering now if this is usually worse when I only have a small room, and it’s too noisy to explain the activity properly, but no I don’t think it’s that because I had an awful room the other day in Windsor, and the best performance ever from a group of dads (they juggled with the knitted boobs). Sometimes I get to the explanation and then the dads say what do you want us to do? and then I know it will be bad, because if they didn’t listen to the first instruction (I’m going to explain it all to you, and then your job is to convey it to them), then they didn’t pay attention to the explanation either.
One thing I have started to do is recap the whole thing after the dads have finished, although last time I did this, they had done a perfectly good job and I felt like I was patronising them and suggesting they hadn’t done it well. One thing with teaching people about breastfeeding is that you become hyper-aware of the danger of undermining people’s confidence. So maybe I need to decide on a class-by-class basis whether a recap is necessary (In fact they always get a recap, but because it comes maybe 15 minutes later as part of the next segment of my session, perhaps they don’t quite notice that I’ve done it). The trouble is, recapping material that has already been covered uses up a chunk of my time, and I rarely have time to spare.
And then last week, along came some feedback that made my jaw drop: that I was aloof and seemed bored with the material.
Seriously? Those who know me in a non-BFC context may be able to see aloof; but in a breastfeeding context, really, aloof? I find this so difficult to get a grip on. Either the respondent doesn’t understand the word aloof, or they must surely have misunderstood some other element of my performance that day: tiredness, being slightly under the weather, and finding them a fairly heavy-going group, perhaps. Sometimes it’s like that in an evening session, it’s late in the day, I fail to get a spark off them. My questions hover in silence and I have to step in and answer them myself. I don’t think I am bored with the material, but sometimes I am disheartened by a group whose agenda focuses mainly on expressing and what gadgets to buy, as that one did. It doesn’t give me much to work with, when I know I have to convey the mechanics of milk production whilst also conveying that for newborn babies milk=love, safety, health and well-being, and not just food, which explains away much newborn behaviour. Perhaps my internal sigh when someone told me that fathers are disadvantaged in bonding, because they don’t breastfeed, was not as internal as I thought.
I have been saying for weeks that I need a break, so I can come back with a fresh approach and not feel so jaded and cynical; but that isn’t going to happen until December. Next August I will be taking a much longer chunk of time off, for precisely this reason. I am leaving this post with no conclusion, but at least I have reflected on what I can do better and maybe I’ll write that one sometime. Work isn’t busy…