Doctors’ Tips for Keeping Your Kids Healthy

Never Let Up on Safety Measures

What the doctor wants you to know: “Be as rigorous as you can with car seats, seat belts, and childproofing, and update your equipment as your child ages―moving older children to car seats that fit their height and weight ranges, for example. There’s no need to be overprotective, but there are simple things you should always do,” advises Steve Shelov, the chair of pediatrics at Maimonides Medical Center, in Brooklyn, and the editor in chief of Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5 (Bantam Books, $20, bn.com).

Where he slacks off: “The American Academy of Pediatrics rule is to keep kids away from the television before age two, but I let my children watch before that age. An hour of Fred Rogers wasn’t so bad.”