TY - JOUR T1 - Christmas as a teaching tool JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 160 LP - 161 VL - 57 IS - 535 AU - Julie Scott Taylor Y1 - 2007/02/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/57/535/160.abstract N2 - I am an academic family physician with a particular interest in maternal–child health. I am also a mother of two young children. Some medical students recently asked me to give a talk on the developmental stages of preschool children as a part of a course for first-year students. I racked my brains as to how best to impart this information in a concise and interesting format that would be easily understandable to budding clinicians with little or no previous experience with children. I was still thinking about it as the holidays arrived. Then, suddenly it dawned on me that I might be able to use the holidays in general, and Christmas in particular, as a teaching tool. So this is how I am putting my talk together …AGE 2 MONTHS: On Santa: red, white, black. That's about it at the beginning. This is a chance to discuss how infant vision develops.AGE 6 MONTHS: I will explain to students that it is still safe at this point to leave your child in a room with a Christmas tree (for both the tree and the child). Babies at this age often are able to sit up and look at the lights but are not usually very mobile, which limits their destructive potential. A few more months, and they will want to grab (and taste) every ornament.AGE 9 MONTHS: Stranger anxiety is at its peak which impacts tremendously on that curious ritual of placing a child on a strange, obese man's lap and trying to get the … ER -