What parent doesn’t want to protect their child from getting injured or sick? While it will happen at some point, there are certainly ways that both you and your pediatrician can work together to ensure that your child doesn’t have to deal with completely avoidable injuries or illnesses. One way to do that is through regular wellness visits with your pediatrician.

What is a wellness visit?
While you should bring your child into the doctor’s office when they are sick, this isn’t the only time that they should be visiting a pediatrician. Regular wellness visits allow your child’s doctor to continue to monitor their health and development throughout their childhood and teen years. A wellness or well-child visit typically involves:

• Recording your child’s height and weight
• Providing a detailed medical history of your child
• Checking vital signs
• Hearing and vision screenings (depending on the age)
• A full physical examination (painless and non-invasive)
• Additional testing or blood work, if necessary
• Vaccinations, as needed
• Answer any questions that the parent may have about their child’s health and provide information and advice on ways to keep your child healthy

Once your baby is born, they will come in regularly for wellness visits (nearly every month until they are three years old). Throughout these wellness visits your pediatrician will continue to monitor their development and pinpoint any issues early on when some problems can be treated or even reversed.

Furthermore, children will need to go through a series of vaccines during the first few years of life. Vaccines are one of the best ways to protect your child from serious and potentially life-threatening diseases such as polio. By keeping up with your child’s wellness and vaccine schedule you ensure that you are providing your child with everything that they need to stay healthy.

Why are wellness visits so important?
As you can probably assume already, these checkups are the best way to prevent health problems from happening in the first place (which we can all agree is so much better than just treating the problem once it comes along). Other benefits of wellness visits include:

• Providing parents with support, peace of mind, and advice regarding everything from sleep schedules and diet to medications and behavioral concerns.
• Catch problems early on, whether physical, mental or behavioral, when they can easily be managed and treated through simpler and less invasive treatment options
• Having a doctor that becomes an important part of your family; someone you can trust and rely on to always be there for your child. After all, knowing that you have a doctor that you can turn to in an emergency is invaluable.

A wellness visit is one of the easiest ways to keep your child healthy. If it’s time for your little one’s next checkup call your pediatrician today.