Your child should not only see a pediatrician for an illness. It is also important to schedule well-child care exams regularly, beginning in infancy. Also called well-care visits or checkups, these routine examinations provide the best opportunity for the doctor to observe the progress of your child’s physical and mental growth and development. These appointments also provide the opportunity to counsel and teach parents, detect problems through screening tests, provide immunizations, and to get to know one another. Well-care visits are strongly recommended as part of preventive pediatric care. Well-child visits are also a good time for parents to raise questions and concerns about a child’s development, behavior, nutrition, safety, and overall well-being. For reference, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends this schedule for routine well-care visits:

• 3 to 5 days
• 1 month
• 2 months
• 4 months
• 6 months
• 9 months
• 12 months
• 15 months
• 18 months
• 24 months
• 30 months
• 3 years
• 4 years

And once every year after that for an annual health supervision visit, which includes a physical exam and a developmental, behavioral, and learning assessment.