Duke Medicine: Day care diseases

Most parents today work at least part-time, either for personal growth or for financial survival -- which means their child needs to be cared for by someone else. Typically, this care takes place in an environment that puts their child in close contact with other children, and, hence, at increased risk of infection.

Dr. Dennis Clements, who is the chief of primary care pediatrics at Duke Children's Hospital, writes that many parents of young children talk to him about how difficult it is to deal with the seemingly constant series of illnesses their child picks up in day care.

He finds that explaining why this is so helps them to realize that they are doing nothing wrong, their child is normal, and that some day this will all go away, he says.