I've come to trust my gut instincts more and more when it comes to dealing with the common sicknesses my kids encounter. And I've thought a good bit about why we do what we do - spooning out the grape-flavored meds - when our kids do get sick. Do our kids really benefit from medicines, or do we cause more harm than benefit?

We usually medicate our kids for three main reasons:

1. Because they're uncomfortable, in pain, hurting in some form or another. We give medicine to lower fevers, to ease the pain of teething, to soothe a sore throat . 
2. Because we believe (rightly or wrongly) that the medicine will help cure the pain. We give antibiotics to help our kids get over an ear infection or a nasty case of the stomach bug. 
3. Because we want to prevent the pain/sickness from getting worse. That's why we use topical antibacterial cream on cuts and scrapes; it doesn't usually help the wound to feel better. In many cases, it stings more. But we know that preventing infection is important, so we use medicine.

Now I'm not a doctor; I'm just a Mom. But what I've found in my own experience and research is that the first reason for giving medicine is usually the most common. It's easy to give kids a pain killer or cold medicine, because they're readily available over-the-counter and because, as Moms, we don't want our kids to be in pain. (We also would like to sleep through the night, or at least for more than one hour at a time during the night, and let's face it, medicine can be a big help with that.) But the problem with a quick-medication response to any little fever or pain is that our attempt to ease the symptoms can often extend the actual sickness.

Dealing with fever is an easy example on this. A fever is the body's natural response to bad stuff happening in the body, to put it in very simple terms. The fever is effectively killing off what is causing the sickness, so when we respond by medicating the fever, we actually reduce the body's ability to heal itself. I'm not saying that you shou...