Faculty Bibliography

Often the medical considerations for a sick child are less relevant than what parents bring to the caretaking. A physician learns that a child and parents are a package

A short story is presented

A doctor agonizes over whether to take a vacation or stay and make sure that one of her patients, a toddler who was severly dehydrated, would be taken care of. The doctor eventually realizes that there are plenty of other people at the hospital who would take good care of the child, and the doctor leaves for a vacation

Physicians have to accept the fact that part of making difficult medical decisions is living with the consequences. The anxiety in making these types of decisions has not diminished in one doctor's career

Most of the mistakes parents make in raising their children won't ruin them forever. Ten forgivable parenting mistakes, including fighting in front of the children and having too little structure, are discussed

Perri Klass comments on the enjoyment she finds in knitting

Medical charts that are more voluminous than a young patient's years of age are a bad sign. Charts can speak of medical struggles, diagnostic challenges, therapeutic attempts and medical failures

Here is what we owe children: everything. Warmth in the winter and bright colors in the classroom. Safe streets walking home and a playground where you can fall off the swings and not land on concrete. A hot lunch on a cold day, a picture book at naptime. A full range of vaccinations against the 'preventable' diseases of childhood, careful medical surveillance to pick out and treat curved spines, vision problems, learning disabilities, AIDS, asthma and anything else that may complicate a child's business: playing, growing, learning. The Geneva-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when he defined the social contract, began from the paradoxical premise that man is born free, but is everywhere in chains. ('L'homme est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers.') Well, man may be born free, in some metaphysical sense, but he is also born completely dependent, as an infant, then as a child, and he continues in a state of dependency for a good long time. The social contract is about what we owe to each other, mutually, but it is also about those benefits we as a society owe to our children, which they will pay back to the children of the next generation

A parent's duties are endless, and when one parent travels the other is often put in a lousy situation. A possible bout with head lice contracted at the day care center, which is quashed by a shampoo session, is discussed

A doctor describes asking a child's mother when her daughter began experiencing seizures and wondering whether the child had these seizures because of neglect. The mother was poor and felt like people thought she had abused the child because the child lacked the material amenities other people could afford