Frequent questions and answers in well baby clinic

Abstract

Babies and children should be grown up well physically and mentally. Parents have a lot of questions for children's growth, nutrition, vaccinations, and development until adolescents from the newborn. Our society has traditional knowledge of children's care. However, nowadays, there are not enough grandmothers who have much experience in children's care. In addition, some of traditional knowledge is not scientific and even more harmful. Therefore, medical doctors, mainly pediatricians, have to answer to many questions from parents. Sometimes those questions are not familiar with. But doctors cannot get away from the questions because they are necessary and serious to care babies and children. It is uneasy to explain medical terminologies and knowledge. Often medical doctors have difficulty in sympathizing with the thoughts of parents to give adequate and reasonable answers. So the parents might feel some disappointments. There are no absolutely correct answers for questions, because they rose from various situations and environments of their children. The Korean Pediatric Society has established an on-line consultation service for children's care for several years on our home page and "aga-love" site of the Planned Population Federation of Korea. The doctors did not accept questions for the diseases of children because they could not give helpful answers without clinical examinations. Moreover, there might be misunderstandings between medical personnel and parents. The Society collects and arranges some typical answers for frequent questions. These are not the best answers but just to provide some useful information.