cover image You Just Don't Duct Tape a Baby!: True Tales and Sensible Suggestions from a Veteran Pediatrician

You Just Don't Duct Tape a Baby!: True Tales and Sensible Suggestions from a Veteran Pediatrician

Norman Weinberger. Warner Books, $21.5 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-446-51965-6

Weinberger teams up with newspaper columist Pohn to recount his whole-family approach to pediatrics in lively and engaging anecdotal chapters. Though the book gets off to a slow start, before long the reader is drawn into an amiable memoir that uses the doctor's own growth as the father of two children to fill out his account of the office visits that comprise his 25-year career. Wearing cowboy boots, a gaudy tie and a tiny teddy bear strapped to his stethoscope, Weinberger encounters children who have a variety of medical and behavioral problems-from ear infections to tantrums-and reaches beyond symptoms to find out how the emotional, mental and medical needs of a family are intertwined. For instance, sleuthing out the cause of an adolescent's stomach cramps, he discovers she's going through a stressful college application process; his own fourth-grader's morning nausea was precipitated by the pending class play. While some parents aren't comfortable with Weinberger's probing (several leave the practice or switch to his partner in the course of the narrative), more are grateful for the solutions often arrived at by focusing on such issues as the state of the parents' marriage and demands of their jobs. Weinberger's own challenges as a dad and husband (his son sees a psychologist because of ""school problems""; his wife returns to a busy career) articulate a humanistic practice of medicine that gives full attention to the whole person and the family unit. Author tour. (Apr.)