Advances in Pediatrics
A. Zisman MD1
1 Spring Valley, NY
A number of advances in behavioral and developmental pediatrics have occurred during the last 20 years that have changed pediatric practice. They should be added to the list of major advances by Dr Rapkin published last year (Pediatr Rev 1987;8:248).
Until 1948 parents were permitted to visit their hospitalized children usually only once a week. In the 1950s and 1960s common pediatric visiting hours were perhaps two to three hours per day. James Robertson and John Bowlby, in England, performed the important studies demonstrating the behavior of hospitalized children when separated from their parents. Their focus was on children 6 months to 3 to 4 years of age. They described a sequence of behaviors in the separated, hospitalized child from an initial protest, to despair, to detachment.
