Preventative Education can help improve early childhood health

By Ashton Daigle

The key component to raising healthy children is education, along with patterns and trends established during the first few months of a child's life.

Frequent visits to the pediatrician should be a routine for new infants. On average, visits to the pediatrician begin at around two weeks of age and are followed by visits at two, four, six, nine and 12 months of age, Dr. Erik Johnson, MD, selected as a Chicago Top Doctor by TopTierMD as a top rated pediatrician in Chicago, says.

From birth to the first few months of age, Dr. Johnson said he spends a lot of time looking at the entire well being of the child and trying to educate parents on what to expect.

“It doesn’t really matter if its first-time parents or parents who have had a few children,” Dr. Johnson said. “There are always concerns. And in an age when just about anybody can put information or their opinions out on the Internet, I try to make sure parents can use me to either help dispel medical myths or just as a sounding board. Frequent visits to the pediatrician, especially when the child is an infant, really help to alleviate a lot of fears for parents.

“Preventative education is a really a major focal point in pediatrics today. It’s important to establish proper health habits at around two to four months of age because, if you wait, it really is much harder to change bad habits later on.”

Among the top health habits Dr. Johnson addresses early on are proper sleep schedules and good nutrition.

“Proper sleep patterns are so important because they impact so many aspects of the child’s health,” Dr. Johnson said. “We really try to work hard to get the child into a good pattern of sleep very early on. A lot of parents, particularly first time parents, sleep with their children. But when the child gets to be past four months, that need from the infant really dwindles. That’s the time when parents need to really allow that baby to start to learn to put him or herself to sleep.”

The same rules also apply for proper nutrition. Dr. Johnson stresses that early eating habits can set the pattern for a lifetime and, in an age where childhood obesity has become a serious issue that can lead to greater health problems down the line like heart disease and high blood pressure, healthy patterns should be established early on in the infant’s first few months of life.

In addition to educating parents and helping them to establish healthy choices for their babies, Dr. Johnson said he also makes it a point to check on the well-being of the parents.

“One of the first questions I ask a parent when they come in is ‘How are you doing?’” Dr. Johnson says. “We’re not just looking at the health of the child, but of the parent too. We screen for postpartum depression. Sometimes the parents don’t even know we’re doing it. However, it is a very serious issue”

Dr. Johnson noted that postpartum depression, particularly in first time fathers, is severely under-diagnosed.

“It’s important that the parents get proper mental or physical health treatment if they need it because, ultimately, it will help them to raise healthier babies,” Dr. Johnson says.

Dr. Erik Johnson, MD, was selected by TopTierMD as a Chicago Top Doctor and is considered Best in Pediatrics in Chicago. He specializes in general pediatric care from birth through adolescence.