Pediatricians

Over the Thanksgiving break I met a young pediatrician at a friend's party. She was freshly out of her residency and into motherhood with an almost two year old daughter. Child rearing was the obvious topic of conversation. She shared that her daughter takes hours to go to bed and wakes up many times during the night. The doctor has all kinds of advice coming to her from older women in her family about what to feed the child, how to handle the sleep issue and how to treat common childhood ailments. I was stunned as to how clueless the young mother seemed about things such as discipline, sleeping etc. In fact, not much different from how I was with my first child but somehow I was expecting a pediatrician to be more aware. After all, aren't we always advised to consult our pediatrician when in doubt. I did receive very good and wise advice, and immense support from the first pediatrician I consulted for my babies. I still remember and use his wise words. Now that I think of it, all his advice wasn't really coming from his medical degree. It was the advice of a man who had spent 40 years of his life working with children and had seen it all. The medical degree did not give him the knowledge about child rearing, just the opportunity to be with many parents and children, and to learn from them.

This got me wondering if we should seek our pediatrician's advice on child-rearing matters, or consult them strictly for medical issues. What do you do?