Someone asked about an 8 mo who wasn't interested in solids, and last
month it was a 10 month old.   "We" all agree that babies don't have
to start solids by a given age, and I have heard of children who
exclusively breastfed until 18 mos old, and were healthy.   As
discussed here on Lactnet a couple/few years ago, the idea that there
was a "cut-off" age came from work done with very developmentally
delayed children.  In those instances, there *was* an age by which
learning the skills of eating solids was preferable or it would be
much harder at an older age, but in most cases, it isn't so.

It's kind of like the studies that "demonstrate" a need for crawling
before walking or the child will never coordinate properly.  Going
'way back, we learn that the study was done on kittens who were
isolated in a tiny environment and were unable to crawl, among a lot
of other things.  Of course, they grew up odd.  :-)

And then there is the pesky 4% figure about women who can't make
enough milk....  A lot of these things are just passed on and one, and
rarely do people go back and read the paper that started it all.

Is this a soapbox?  Was I on a soapbox?!  I dunno, but I'll get down now.
==

Kate Hallberg, mom to Ursula (wow! 4) and Sage (almost 2)
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~kolina
Does "I hope I've answered your questions" mean "Have I answered?"
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/8193/


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