I've said this before, and I know several of you disagree with me, but let me say it once more.
Doctors are experts in medicine. They spend years training in that subject matter. They are very knowledgeable in that field. Giftedness and gifted education is simply something that is not now taught in medical school. It's not something pediatricians know anything about unless they've researched it on their own for their own purposes. They are
by no means experts in that field. They aren't even experts in child development. They know just enough to be able to spot a problem, and in most cases they'd refer a problem to a specialist rather than dealing with it themselves.
So if they give their opinions, they are lay opinions, not expert opinions. Now, I have nothing against people giving lay opinions, but in the context of a doctor's visit, people are going to give the doctor's opinion far more weight than it deserves. And we are going to have some (but obviously not all) pediatricians giving awful, ill-informed, and totally inappropriate advice and parents taking that advice as absolute truth.
I think it's wonderful that some of you have gotten good advice from your pediatricians on this topic. But I am only too aware of the terrible advice pediatricians often give on topics that are outside their area of expertise.
Okay, rant over.
