By Joan Goodchild
7/15/10
A study that appears in this month's edition of the journal Pediatrics finds a short conversation about bottle drinking between doctors and parents at a baby's nine-month check up can help them wean their child off the bottle sooner. Why is this important? Because long-term bottle use can lead to diet problems and tooth decay, according to the research. The study goes on to say getting baby off the bottle as soon as possible after nine months is best for the health of the child.
Many children use a bottle until they reach 12 months. At that point, their toddler diet is varied with many kinds of solid foods. Formula, or breast milk for those who are still nursing, is no longer the key nutritional source.
All of the moms I've known over the years have weaned their child off the bottle by 12 or 15 months. All of the moms, except me.
Hi, my name is Joan. And I'm a baby-bottle enabler.
Parents typically discover that each child has their "thing" – that safety item that helps them feel secure, and soothes them when they are upset or stressed. For both of my children, that is a bottle. My son, now age five, drank his nightly milk from a bottle until he was (gulp) three years old. The only way I got him to give it up was to point out that his newborn baby sister was also drinking from a bottle, and he certainly didn't want to look like a baby.
And speaking of his newborn sister, she is two now. And she still drinks from a bottle. We encourage her daily to drink from her sippy cup with lots of praise and reinforcement – but she just won't budge. Every other liquid is acceptable to her if presented in a cup, but not her precious milk. When it's time for milk, only the bottle will do.
Over the years, I've viewed my inability to get my kids off the bottle within an age-appropriate time frame with both a mix of shame and relief. I'm relieved that their "thing" is not something that is often more difficult to stop a child from doing, like using a pacifier or sucking a thumb. And I've spoken with several friends who practiced extended breastfeeding (defined as nursing a child past the age of 12 months) who detailed the extremely tough, and even heartbreaking, task of stopping that bonding ritual once they felt it needed to end. These are all things that toddlers use for soothing and relaxation, and asking them to stop seems cruel.
But I also feel like a lazy parent when studies, like this one in Pediatrics, are released and very effectively point out that letting my kids use a bottle well past the appropriate age is not only unnecessary, but also pretty silly, and even unhealthy. Soothing or not, there are definite downsides and risks to what I am doing, and it fills me with guilt.
What do you think? Does your child have a soothing habit, technique or ritual that they refuse to give up? How important is it to keep to age-appropriate guidelines when it comes to bottle use, pacifier use and other so-called "baby" items that some toddlers latch onto just a bit too long? Leave us a comment and let us know your thoughts.