Wellness Visits
Wellness visits to WellStar’s pediatric physicians provide opportunities to ensure that your child is growing up healthy, gets immunizations, and time for you to ask questions.
This questionnaire from HealthyChildren.org can help you identify questions to ask:.
How Is Your Child Currently Doing?
- How is your preschooler’s overall health?
- Does your preschooler seem to have an abnormal appetite?
- What foods does your child routinely refuse to eat?
- Does your preschooler demand certain foods?
- Does your child eat meals and snacks at regular times?
- Is your child physically active, particularly when compared with other children the same age?
- What activities does your preschooler participate in?
- Does your preschooler watch TV? How many hours on a typical day?
- Does your child have a TV in his/her bedroom?
- Does your preschooler watch TV during meals daily?
What is Going Well?
- Using the previous information, list areas that are going well relative to your child’s health.
- What steps have you taken to lower the levels of dietary fat in your youngster’s diet?
- How many six-ounce glasses of milk (whole / 2 percent /1 percent / skim) does your child drink daily?
What Problems Exist?
- What childhood health issues are raising concerns?
- Do you have any worries about your child’s appetite?
- Is your child a picky eater, shunning certain food groups?
- How often does your family eat at fast-food restaurants in a typical week?
- What other nutrition-related issues concern you?
- Is it difficult to get your child to be physically active?
What Changes Should Be Made?
- What obstacles are preventing you from resolving the issues that you’ve identified?
- What steps could you begin taking to ensure that your child eats healthier, more balanced meals?
- What measures could you use to lower the levels of dietary fat in your youngster’s diet?
- How can you integrate more activity into your child’s life?
Choose a single problem you’d like to deal with and identify and list solutions to it. Next, begin to implement these strategies and record your successes. Also, identify who can support you and your child in these efforts (for example, spouse, relatives).
Based on your answers in this assessment, write down questions and concerns that you’d like to raise with your pediatrician about your preschooler’s nutrition, physical activity, and other issues relevant to his/her health. Take this list with you to your next doctor’s visit.