TV Doctor

Seated behind his office desk, the fatherly-looking man glances up comfortably. "Hello," he says. "Today I'd like to talk about . . ." That almost invariable opening signals another TV installment of The Children's Doctor, with Lendon Smith, M.D. It is not exactly the most sparkling come-on in show biz, but Dr. Smith's daily five-minute show on ABC-TV is fast becoming the most visible nonfiction medicine around. And with good reason, for Dr. Smith purveys a type of pediatrics that today's doctors rarely have time for: he spends 3 1/2 minutes talking in simple terms about the normal health problems of childhood.

His counsel is sane, sensible and unpompous. "The current thinking on toilet training," he explains, "is that it is best to wait until the child is less contrary; for girls, two, and for boys, three. So get a new washing machine and hang on." The normal two-year-old, he reassures parents, is "really potbellied and does have flat feet and knock-knees." In an attempt to dispel the mystique surrounding milk as a health must, he counsels, "Milk is a food, not the food. After ten months or a year, a child should be discouraged from drinking it, and if he does, he should certainly drink skimmed milk to avoid the worst fats." Yet Dr. Smith is not dogmatic. On a warm day, he said, there is nothing better than a cold glass of milk. He closed the program by downing a tumblerful.

Cracker in the Ear. Dr. Smith's easygoing competence makes it hard to decide whether he is the Julia Child of medicine or the Dr. Spock of television. In either case, after 16 years of practice, the Portland, Ore., pediatrician took easily to TV. He uses no script. "I may have a note or two," he says, "but it's natural to me. A mother comes into my office and says, 'My child wets the bed.' So I give her 3 1/2 minutes on bed wetting. I do the same on TV." He got into the business when a local interview show was short a guest. His office was next door, and the interviewer grabbed him. He was a success, began appearing regularly. Two months ago, The Children's Doctor went nationwide, now appears on 150 ABC stations.

Dr. Smith tapes ten shows in two hours, though children are often uncooperative. To show how to cope with a tantrum, he employed a 15-month-old whose mother "guaranteed that he would throw one on cue. He just sat and said 'ha, ha, ha' to me." In similar form, a hyper-motor child stayed stock-still throughout the show. "My best program," he says, "involved showing how one-year-olds want to imitate their parents by feeding themselves. But they don't handle the spoon so well. One child took a banana, smashed it down flat, looked to see if it was dead and then ate it. The last shot on-camera he took a cracker, crushed it, looked right into the lens with a great big smile and stuck it in his ear."

It is not all rollicking. Three weeks ago, Dr. Smith was discussing intelligence. Next it was allergies, and last week a look at the four-year-old's behavior, diet and skills. A program can be as technical as how to differentiate flu vomiting from vomiting owing to an abdominal obstruction, and it can be as everyday as how to keep the kid from getting fidgety in the car. "I hope," he says, "to dispel some old wives' tales about care and feeding, to enable people to differentiate between normal and abnormal behavior and to know when to worry and when not to worry."

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