This story started back when Suri Cruise was two years old. Experts and parents were all up in arms about her still drinking from a bottle back then. I remember thinking then it wasn’t that big of a deal. Then.

Flash forward two years, and tons of photos of Suri being a spoiled princess and we see her pushing four years old still sucking on a bottle. This photo was taken last Friday in NYC where Katie Holmes is shooting her new thriller Son of No One.

Granted…Suri travels alot and has paps in her face on the reg and maybe the comfort of the bottle keeps her from being a screamer. But still…

One expert told Us that it’s imperative that Tom and Katie get Suri off the bottle at this point.

“By the time kids are nine-months old, they have the physical development and mouth coordination necessary to be able to drink out of a sippy cup or a cup with straw,” said Dr. Jennifer Shu, a pediatrician and co-author of Food Fights. “That development comes pretty early.”

Shu told Us she didn’t “know why” Cruise and Holmes still allowed their daughter to drink from one. “You don’t force kids to crawl when they can walk,” Shu told Us.

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise are getting slammed today for allowing their 3 year-old daughter to still drink from a bottle. Child development experts  started slinging opinions after this picture of Suri was snapped Wednesday sucking on a bottle on the set of her momma’s new flick, The Romantics.

“She should have been weaned off the bottle by the time she was one year old,” Dr. Jennifer Shu, a pediatrician and co-author of Food Fights , tells Usmagazine.com. “By the time kids are nine months old, they have the physical development and mouth coordination necessary to be able to drink out of a sippy cup or a cup with straw. That development comes pretty early.”

But on the other hand….

But Dr. Harvey Karp — a pediatrician, child development specialist and creator of the DVD and book, The Happiest Toddler On The Block – doesn’t think it’s such a big deal. “Sucking is normal for kids when they are tired or bored — as long as kids aren’t keeping the bottle in their mouths for hours” he tells Us, adding that it may serve as an emotional security device. “Thumb-sucking is more damaging.”

I actually agree with Dr.Karp…it’s not like you don’t 3 year-old’s still using pacifiers. What’s the dif? There’s a certain stigma attached to a kid using a bottle too long.  And they are either hiding the fact that she’s still on the B (we never see pics of her sucking on her wheatgrass anymore) or she is really only using for a comfy. A small piece of calm in her crazy, celebrity baby life. I’ll tell you the real reason you can’t let a 2-3 year-old have a bottle..they chew through the damn nipples at an alarming rate!