What Your Pediatrician Doesn't Know Can Hurt Your Child

Book excerpt: Sometimes doctors don't know best. Luckily, mom and doctor Susan Markel is a pediatrician who questions conventional wisdom and instead partners decision-based medicine with the best ideas of attachment parenting. Too often, parents ignore their instincts and better sense to follow their doctor's advice, such as overtreating vulnerable children, letting babies cry themselves to sleep and giving their children cow's milk for strong bones, even though strong evidence shows none of these practices is the best route. Revealing the medical industry's gaps in knowledge is Dr. Susan Markel, frequent contributor to BabyCenter.com, the world's most popular parenting site, and Le Leche League International medical liaison, and Linda F. Palmer, D.C., author of Baby Matters, in What Your Pediatrician Doesn't Know Can Hurt Your Child. This new work combines the latest research with solid advice from a pediatrician who dares to defy her rote education and big-industry-supported dogma and seek out parent- and child-centered choices in all aspects of child care. As a mother and a pediatrician with 27 years' experience, Dr. Markel has come to find that less intervention in the natural processes generally brings superior outcomes. While providing helpful how-to natural parenting ideas throughout, What Your Pediatrician Doesn't Know Can Hurt Your Child gives parents insight into many instances where standard pediatric dogma is in conflict with the best research. Parents will find comprehensive solutions to specific health concerns and issues affecting children, such as: • Nutrition, including breastfeeding • Shared sleep • Common illnesses and drug usage • Allergies and asthma • Attention deficit disorder • Emotional health • Discipline In a reader-friendly, succinct format, not bogged down by scientific digressions, this book will assist parents in making the best possible choices for the mental and physical health of their children.