Host: What do you do when you find that your child is sick?

Robin Vick: You know the day is going to come where you -- despite the best intentions and the most real and thorough prevention activities that's you are going to suspect that your child is getting ill and lots of families talk with us and they say, well, I don't know how to really to describe what I am seeing. I don't know the words to be able to talk about or diagnose an illness. I think it's important for us to establish that parents by virtue of their ongoing -- just connection with their children know very very well. They are the experts about when a child is not right, when one of their kids is showing a change and even if you do not know what, let's say, a wheeze is, you know how it may sound and you can use your powers of observation to make an assessment that can then be communicated in your own language.

So I am recommending that parents begin to rely on themselves as the experts, they really are. They may not know the language and they may not know the ultimate diagnosis, but their job is to really to be identifying how their child is different. Why, what situations, what signs and symptoms are showing a change and then communicate that kind of assessment to the health care team and then it's with that ongoing conversation, when parents begin to describe their assessments that the health care professional can say, okay you have identified this, this and this is different. Alright let's talk a little bit more about that.

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