Tips for Turning Doctor's Visits into Friend Visits!

Parents often dread taking their young children to the doctor, especially our infants or toddlers. Check-ups, shots, new people all often scare children when visiting the doctor. Here are a few tips to turn doctor's visits from scary times into fun visits with a beloved friend.

1. Change your attitude towards doctors visits.

Often parents react to the doctor as someone who is good but will bring pain to their child. First time parents often worry about that dreaded first time their child will get their shots and those feelings transfer over to their children. Children sense their parents moods.

So it's important as a parent to feel positive about a doctor's visit. Change your attitude before going to the doctor from dread to happiness that your child will be seeing someone important to their health and safety. Relax and concentrate on knowing that any pain that may come at a visit will be short lived and in the end beneficial to your child.

It's important to enter a doctor's office with a feeling of calm and relaxation so your child will be calm and relaxed and thus happy when the doctor sees her.

2. Become friends!

As a child grows older they become more aware of friends and people they enjoy visiting. Start early with your child and refer to the doctor as their friend, someone they will enjoy. This ties into the above tip of being positive. Always refer to the doctor as a positive person in your child's life.

Before every visit to the doctor talk to your child how you'll be visiting a good friend and how much fun it will be. You will need to bring a toy or a book your child loves as well to the doctor's office so that your child does not become bored while waiting.

3. Explore the doctor's office and get to know everyone.

The more comfortable your child is with the office staff, nurses and doctors the better the visits will be. Exploring all aspects of what is done, and fully explaining why it's happening, will help relieve any fears about the visit.

For instance, your child is being weighed and measured. Explain why they are checking those two things and celebrate the procedure as well. Say, "You grew a whole inch! That's wonderful!" or "Wow! You weigh 33 pounds now. You're growing up!" Making your child feel like they are doing something good by being at the doctor's office will make them want to return later to do more good for the doctor.

4. Find the right doctor.

This is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle. Finding the right doctor, one who makes the visit fun and comfortable for your child. One who can entertain as well as be informative. One who isn't in a hurry and takes the time to become friends with your child.

If you manage to follow these steps you can have happy and relaxing doctors visits and your child will want to go back to the doctor because it's the fun thing to do. Even if you need to visit a doctor unknown to your child, your child will feel comfortable with any doctor because you've taught her that doctors are friends and always make things better, never worse.