MARK KENNEDY: Deciding when to make a doctor’s appointment for a child’s minor illness is one of the toughest calls in parenting. At my house, my wife is usually the advocate for early intervention, and I am prone toward watchful waiting. In my experience, it’s usually a coin flip as to whether a visit to the doctor helps a child recover more quickly in these instances. (Obviously, serious injury or severe illness always calls for prompt medical attention.)
LISA DENTON: I remember when my children were small, every pediatrician in the practice was familiar with our extended family. It wasn’t just their father and me trundling them to appointments, but grandparents and a couple of great-aunts helped as well. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and no time is that truer than when a child is sick. My daughter had allergies, and my son was dogged with ear infections, which led to a couple of surgeries for drainage tubes, so we were fixtures at the specialists’ offices too.
MARK: One of the things that has helped us immensely is having a bookshelf dedicated to medical reference books. One book – “The Complete Authoritative Guide To Caring for Your Baby and Young Child Birth to Age 5,” by the American Academy of Pediatrics – has helped us make the call on doctor visits dozens of time. (There’s another edition for older children.)
I’ve noticed that when you Google symptoms you can pretty much find any answer you want. When you have in print the collected wisdom of the best pediatricians in the world, it makes you feel better. The AAP book even has little boxes embedded in some of the entries that tell you in clear detail when to see a physician.
LISA: The book sounds like a wise choice. I’m glad I didn’t have easy access to Internet searches when I was a young parent, or I would have been a nervous wreck reading the possible diagnoses of various symptoms. Because so many family members lived nearby, I always had voices of experience to call upon when I was unsure.
Looking back, I never regretted taking them to the pediatrician for something that turned out to be nothing. But there are a couple of times, even now that my kids are grown, when I wish I had acted sooner.