Good for you for your outrage and your willingness to put it to paper. However, this seems to me to be missing the point.

The problem here is that this doctor doled out unsolicited, unwanted, unnecessary parenting advice in a way that was pushy, offensive, and left the patient's mother feeling very uncomfortable. First and foremost, this kind of approach would not be OK even if the woman had in fact been doing something potentially harmful. Secondly, since nursing a toddler is not harmful the doctor should not be getting involved at all. She was trying to foist her particular beliefs about weaning age on a parent who had chosen to do things a different way, which is outside her remit as a doctor and which she should not have been doing. 

The question of whether nursing a toddler is *beneficial* or not is *irrelevant* to the above statements. The issue is not whether you can cite references to say that nursing a toddler is good. The issue is that, unless the doctor can provide hard evidence (i.e. not her opinions) that a particular parenting act is *harmful*, she should be staying the hell out of it. If she feels that nursing a toddler or any other act is detrimental, it's up to her to justify that, not up to others to justify nursing. Furthermore, even if she does have good reason to raise questions over someone's actions, it should be done in a more tactful and appropriate way.


Best wishes,

Sarah Vaughan

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