  urlLink DotMoms: Dangerously bad advice : "The moral is: When someone tells you they got advice from their 'doctor,' you take it with a healthy shake of salt. " These words come from Marcia, care of urlLink DotMoms , who is discussing her reaction to advice given my Egyptians (she lives there) that doesn't jive with her American experience. I sympathize so deeply with her feelings, and for me, it has nothing to do with Egypt! Often, it's age. I'm in my mid-twenties, and all the moms around me are in their thirties and forties, which seems to give them the impression they're better equipped. If anything I think it's the opposite, but I've never said that.
I just do what one of Marcia's commenters recommended: nod and split. I find myself balancing the need for social appropriateness with a desire to say, "what are you talking about? you give your child fast food and sweets! " Juice. That's a big issue that grinds me. Juice is almost completely devoid of the micronutrients that truly make its source berries a healthful bazaar.
Instead, this stuff is just sugar and water. Parents all around me can't take their kids anywhere without a cup of juice, though. I think they're bribing their kids to stay hydrated, when if they'd lay off the juice, the kid would learn to love water for the taste as well as the hydration. And sugar. People can't understand why I'm such a strict mom about sugar. The only ones I have to be strict with is these other people though, because if you never give a child sugary foods, they don't ask for it.
But I still get snide remarks like, "by my age, I've learned to relax a lot more about little things. " Arrg! But back to Marcia, I've got a fun book called How to Raise Healthy Child in Spite of your Doctor . In some places, it goes further than I do, but in many, it's nice to be backed up re. my strong ideals. Antibiotics are almost never appropriate.
Children's bodies are fantastically resilient if they're left to do their thing. If it weren't so, the species never would have survived! 
