How to Raise a Healthy Child book review

Book Review: How To Raise A Healthy Child…

Several friends recommended How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor and I finally got a chance to read it. Though it was written in the 1970s, much of the information is just as important (if not more so!)

Dr. Mendelsohn is a pediatrician who was hoping to change the field from the inside. In this book, he shares his experience from years of practice.

While Mendelsohn challenges many of the common procedures of Pediatric medicine, he starts by explaining that he doesn’t feel that the doctors are at fault as much as the system itself needs to be changed.

I’ve often felt the same way in my dealings with doctors, especially pediatricians. As a whole, doctors tend to be compassionate and truly interested in helping their patients, though there are still things they have been taught by a faulty system that I refuse for my children.

An Oldie but a Goodie:

With the exception of encouraging mothers to give babies a drop of whiskey to calm them, I felt that most of the information in this book was still very valid and needed in today’s world.

Mendelsohn gives advice and encouragement to parents for handling most minor illnesses at home, and gives a helpful checklist at the end of each chapter for when an injury or illness requires medical help.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I agreed with How To Raise A Healthy Child on topics of illness treatment (or non-treatment), strep throat treatment, ear aches, active children and many other points.

How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor even touches on healthy birth (home vs. hospital), vaccination, and how most skin and respiratory problems (asthma, allergies) actually stem from food intolerances!

We very rarely take any of our children to a doctor (and NEVER give Tylenol or other drugs to bring down fever), and after reading How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, I’m even more comfortable in these decisions. I especially love that Mendelsohn urges parents to trust their own instincts when it comes to their child’s health and says that for minor illness, parents can often handle it better than a doctor could.

How to Raise a Healthy Child is an easy read (I was able to finish in a night) and I’d highly encourage it to all parents or those expecting a first child. I’ll be giving it to many friends as a pregnancy gift and think that much of the information would be helpful to many parents.

Have you read this book? What did you think?