A total of 174 families of service personnel with children between 3 and 6 years of age were studied over a 6 month period. All contacts with the general practitioner, both in and out of hours together with the local casualty department were recorded. Mothers of the children were posted a specially designed questionnaire to measure how seriously they perceived various childhood symptoms to be and a copy of the general health questionnaire, 28 question version (GHQ 28). The perceived severity questionnaire had been piloted previously in a neighbouring practice. The overall response rate was 77%. Analyses of the data showed that the factors most significantly associated with a child's consultation frequency were the psychological state of the mother, the mother's own consultation frequency and the number of children in the family; the last being an inverse relationship. No evidence was found to suggest that the perception of the severity of illness varied with the psychological state of the mother. In addition, the childhood consultation rate was not influenced by the mother's perception of the severity of childhood illness as measured by the perceived severity questionnaire. Other factors such as the age of the mother or child, within the age range studied, were not found to be significantly related to the child's frequency of consulting. A mother's own consultation frequency was highly correlated with her GHQ 28 score, but more specifically with the subsections that scored for depression and somatic symptoms. From the study, doctors who see children should seriously consider the main reasons for a child's consultation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)