Common Childhood Illnesses; When To Call The Doctor If Your Child Is Ill

Although the titles are different, there's a fair amount of overlapping material in these two videos on childhood illnesses. Common Childhood Illnesses covers ear infections, fever, common cold, mumps, tonsillitis, asthma, croup, measles, chickenpox, diarrhea, and constipation, while When To Call The Doctor If Your Child Is Ill touches on most of those illnesses plus dizzy spells and fainting. The organization of When To Call The Doctor... is poor, opening with a talk about meningitis, and including such semantic jewels as "call your doctor if your child's face or limbs twitch while he's unconscious." Twitch, hell. Unconsciousness would be more than enough to get me concerned. Common Childhood Illnesses is much better organized, but still contains some weird remarks: the doctor assures viewers that convulsions associated with high fevers "rarely last more than 15 minutes." As in, not to worry. (Sorry, but if my kid starts doing the funky chicken, I'm not going to wait 15 minutes to see if he's going to stop). Neither program is recommended. (Available from: Cambridge Career Products, P.O. Box 2153, Charleston, WV 25328; 1-800-468-4227.)