Two years ago, photos of celebrity toddler Suri Cruise clinging to a bottle caused a bit of a stir. The issue? Suri was two at the time, and most doctors recommend that kids give up the bottle, which can lead to tooth decay and nutritional deficiencies if overused, long before that. (The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends bottle-weaning by around age one.)
As it turns out, Suri's pediatrician might have been able to offer assistance in this area: A new study suggests that a doctor's reminder at the baby's nine-month check-up can help parents wean their child off the bottle by his first birthday. Canadian researchers monitored more than 200 children and found that children whose parents were given a talk on weaning by their physician stopped using a bottle 4 months earlier (12 months, versus 16 months) than toddlers in the control group. They were also more than half as likely to be using a bottle at two years.
"In five minutes, we changed the health trajectory of a child," lead author Jonathon Maguire, MD, of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, told CNN. His paper appears in the current issue of Pediatrics.
Via Strollerderby
Photo by nerissa's ring
