As a parent, your child is the light of your life, and you’d do anything to make sure they grow up to be healthy and happy. Sometimes though, your child might have something that’s invisible to the naked eye, so it’s important to make sure that you make appointments to have regular check ups on the basic health needs. Here are some appointments you don’t want your child to miss.

5 Appointments You Don’t Want
Your Child To Miss

Pediatric Appointments

One of the most important appointments to make sure your child attends are their pediatric appointments. This could be anyone from a midwife visiting in the first few weeks of their life to a pediatrician’s appointment to check height and weight.

Not only do pediatric appointments help address any issues with your child’s growth, but you can also ask about any other concerns you might be having regarding your child. These appointments may become farther and fewer as your child grows, but it’s important not to miss them when they do come up.

Dentist Appointments

You’re probably already aware that children love anything that isn’t good for their teeth. Anything containing sugar or acidic additives could be causing significant damage to your child’s teeth, even if they do brush their teeth morning and night.

It’s important to make sure that you schedule your child for regular dental visits as soon as their first tooth breaks through. Their dentist will indicate when they need to be seen next, but usually for young children it’s at least once a year.

Hearing Tests

One of those invisible issues that was mentioned earlier is hearing loss. The problem here is that some signs of hearing loss lead to other diagnoses like autism or ADHD. Make sure you have your child’s hearing checked, especially if they show any signs of hearing loss or there’s a history of it in the family.

Calming your expectations from a hearing test is important, as these types of tests can be nerve wracking for children. However, they are designed to be children friendly, and can give you that peace of mind. 

My children’s school district does hearing tests at school each year. Thanks to those tests, we learned all of kids build up a lot of wax in their ears and it can affect their hearing if there is a lot of it. We do drops after their showers now and it really helps!

Vision Tests

Vision problems are another often invisible issue for many young children. Think about it this way, if you’ve seen the world the same way your whole life, why would you question it? Quite often milder versions of shortsightedness or nearsightedness go overlooked because the child doesn’t realize there’s anything wrong.

That’s why it’s important to make sure you take them to have their sight checked at least once a year, or if you notice other signs like bumping into things or squinting when looking at something.

Vision Tests are another thing my children’s school district does each year. They caught vision issues in two of my four kids, one of whom didn’t even realize their was anything wrong until they put on glasses!

Immunizations 

Finally, making sure your children have the right immunizations helps make sure they’re not in danger from certain severe illnesses. The great thing about immunizations is that most of them are given at a young age, meaning not only are they protected early on, but they don’t remember having them done either. If you’re hesitant because you’ve heard that immunizations cause autism, take the time to read up!