Thanks for all the interesting responses!

In many ways this is a, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?", sort of question.

I ask the question, largely, because I have not worked with "normal" (typically developing, mostly healthy) babies. I know that some of the kids I've worked with have been dramatically impacted by the caregivers choice, timing and delivery of foods/liquids/textures. But I don't know that the same is necessarily true of a typically developing, exclusively breastfed child. Even if you WITHHELD solids from a typically developing, breastfed child until say 10+ months due to allergies, maternal choice, lack of food or some other reason isn't it possible that child would/could still eat normally? It seems like that's what some lactnetters were potentially implying about their own kiddos...

There is a proverbial "window of opportunity" for the development of speech. Unfortunately we know this from looking at abused children who were locked up and not spoken to for the first several years of their lives. Even after being rescued they were never able to learn how to speak. Communication is instinctive, but speech is not. Something has to go seriously neurologically or psychologically wrong for someone to lose the ability to communicate. It seems to me that eating would be instinctive. Something has to go very medically or neurologically wrong for someone not to eat. For the babies I worked with they were often choosing breathing over eating OR they were very sick and felt horrible every time they ate OR they had anatomical or neurological issues that prevented them from eating safely. What do you all think?

Judy makes a great point:
"I think the bottom line is we need NORMAL humanfed children to look at to actually really have a good answer to this question. Just like we can't look
at  the sleep of formula fed infants to determine normal sleep for human little  ones, maybe we can't look at formula and/or bottlefed infants and we need to  look at exclusively breastfeeding ( and maybe even at-breast only) infants  during this transition time to get a real answer."

As for Ellen's question: 
"15-20 years ago, did speech therapists and feeding specialists mark the window as 4 months, following the then-current recommendation on introducing solids?  Like many breastfeeding-related issues, this may be a case of science working to confirm the status quo." 
I don't know! I haven't been in the field that long. That's a great question. Anyone know? I will ask around my feeding therapy circles and report back if I get an answer.

Thanks for your input, both on and off list!

-Laura Wasielewski MS, CCC-SLP, IBCLC

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