Dr. Willow Monterrosa is used to answering questions. A lot of questions. As a pediatrician with the Anchorage Pediatric Group since 2004, she spends much of her day fielding questions about illnesses and injuries, children's behavior, what's important in medicine and what's a passing fad. We sneaked in for a quick chat recently and tapped her for answers to all your healthy kids questions.
What advice do you have for
parents for cold and flu season?
Everyone is going to say "wash your hands," which is true. A lot of these illnesses are spread hand to hand. I also feel strongly that keeping kids at baseline good health has to do with getting good nights of rest and healthy diets. Those are the foundations of your health and your immune system.
Now, even if you're doing that, it doesn't mean you're not going to get sick. How you get over your illnesses is related to that. There are aisles in the store filled with cough and cold remedies and medicines. Really it's just a billion-dollar industry that preys on tired parents. There are few things that actually do anything for the cough and congestion in kids and they're not recommended for kids under age 6. Tylenol and ibuprofen are great for reducing fevers and managing pain, like a sore throat and headaches, but in terms of medicines that say they decrease congestion or suppress a cough or loosen mucus, it's a bunch of hooey.
Whats one thing you wish all parents knew?
I wish all parents knew and appreciated the importance of good nutrition. I think that, as a whole in this country, we've done a terrible job of this idea of kid food or kid menus. At the grocery store there are aisles of Gerber Graduates, Lunchables and this sort of kid-friendly food that I don't think is really healthy in general. I wish parents understood the importance of feeding your children, from a very young age, good food. Not kid food, just food, a variety of food that emphasizes the importance of fruits, vegetables and proteins. I wish more parents focused on that. Many do, but a lot don't.
What are the positive and negative effects of electronics use at a young age?
Oh my gosh. It's very easy to come up with a lot of negatives. I think the negatives are that kids are addicted to it. It makes total sense and I'm as guilty as the next. When your young child needs to be occupied, it's really easy to hand them your phone and let them watch a video or play a game so you can do what you need to do as the parent. It's a very easy pacifier for children. We're seeing a time where these kids have never not had it. They've never had a time where they were bored, because they always had a screen. I think it decreases creativity and affects interaction. I think kids who are older are so much more used to communicating with their parents and peers through texting or social media than real conversation, so we're losing ingenuity and social skills. The list goes on and on.
The positives I think are great. The ease of communication I have with my teenage kids. They can tell me they're getting a ride home or the basketball game time has changed. If used well, it can be a good tool for education. I just get worried when the parent of a preschool-age kid talks about how great this new app is for teaching colors and shapes. I'm thinking, how about some blocks? It's a primary concern.
How often should kids get check-ups?
In the first year of life, it should be every two or three months. Between 1 and 3, it's every six months. After age 3, it's every year. The schools in Anchorage require it for kindergarten, or when you're new to a district or, starting in middle school, every year for sports. Lots of kids who aren't doing sports, the school isn't there to make it happen. A lot is done at the well visit. It can seem like "I don't need to take my kid in because they're healthy." Everything from watching a kid's weight to seeing things you wouldn't pick up on—talking about behavior issues, talking about accident prevention—there's a lot that's done at well visits. All kids should be seen at least once a year.
Whats the weirdest foreign object youve had to remove from a child?
That's the best question. Oh, the common things are beads, beans and pebbles in the nose or an ear. Those are a dime a dozen. In residency, I saw a patient—he was 3 years old—and he kept telling his mom, "I swallowed the little green guy." And the mom didn't know what that meant. We got an x-ray and, sure enough, in his stomach you could see a little metallic ring. It was a keychain with a little green goblin on it and he swallowed it. But that one ended up coming out the way it should.
How important is organic food, really?
I don't think we have all the answers yet. I believe that production of food organically is really important to our environment and everything we do. It's becoming more cost effective to buy organic. I try to buy organic when I can, but the price does affect it. If I can buy apples organic for $6 more than the normal ones, I will admit that I'll probably just buy the normal ones. There are people who know a lot more about this then I do. This falls into the area of environmental medicine, what is in our environment that is harmful to us, and these things are hard questions to answer.
How do you counsel parents about the need for vaccinations?
I try to be very understanding to what their concerns are. There's a lot of concern about vaccines, but there's not really any evidence to be concerned. Nothing in life or medicine comes with a guarantee. There are exceedingly rare risks with vaccinations, but they're far less than the risks of not vaccinating. I try to counsel parents on the dangers of the illnesses they're preventing and the benefits to their own child. There are a few people who cannot be immunized because their body doesn't respond well. They rely on everybody else to keep the diseases at bay. The other thing I try to emphasize is, "This isn't your ticket to kindergarten." Parents will say they'll do it before they go to school. They need to do it at the recommended ages for the protection of those babies. Baby vaccines are designed to protect babies, not just so your school nurse will sign off on you for kindergarten.
What do you counsel families on beyond physical health? What might people be surprised to learn you counsel people about?
Potty training, school adjustments, emotional development. If you take the healthy child check-ups, most of what we do isn't the physical. I can do the physical in five minutes. We talk about nutrition. We talk about behaviors. It's normal for a small child to go through a bite or hitting phase, but how do you get them to stop that?
How does being a pediatrician influence how you raise your own children?
That, I would say, is the other way around. I had kids in medical school, so going into pediatrics I drew on my own experiences as a mom. I don't presume that my kids are the same as anybody else's, nor would I want that. I draw on my own experiences and challenges to empathize with other parents when going through what they're going through. My kids are 17, 15 and 11. They've all been very different at different stages. Even if I haven't been through something, just knowing that going through challenges with your kids is hard. But the most practical ways it's changed is I know what to worry about and what not to worry about in term of illnesses. And you see the rare, unusual or tragic, and when you see that as a doctor, you go home and hug your kids extra tight. It makes you really appreciate having a healthy child.
What made you want to work with kids?
I was unusual in my medical school class in that I knew I wanted to go into pediatrics on the first day of medical school, whereas for the vast majority of medical students, that evolves as they find what they like to do. The general answer is I like being involved in pediatrics. But what does that mean? I like being involved with families. I feel like it's a privilege to play this role in families and help them with their kid's health and be there to support. I like the medicine of pediatrics. For the most part, kids are pretty darn honest with you. I like that there's a nice balance of well-care and sick-care. I like the mystery solving. If there's something unusual, you really have to figure it out. It's kind of like being a veterinarian, because your patients can't always tell you what they're feeling or thinking in the younger kids. I like the balance. But my favorite part is my families. I love watching the kids grow, getting involved with these kids and their families over time.
Bailey Berg writes for 61°North now, but she technically got started in the newspaper biz at age 10 as a papergirl in Wisconsin. After trading her delivery bike for a reporter's notebook she realized journalism combined her two great loves: writing about interesting people and drinking a lot of coffee.
This article appeared in the April 2016 issue of 61°North, a publication of ADN's special content department. Contact 61°North editor Jamie Gonzales at jgonzales@alaskadispatch.com.