Anticipatory guidance is the key to achieving two of the primary goals of pediatric care: (1) promoting health and (2) preventing disease. Providing anticipatory guidance in primary care is challenging because of the range and complexity of appropriate issues, the enormous individual differences among normal children and their families, and the limited time in health supervision visits. Despite the time constraints, these challenges can be the greatest source of interesting variety and rewarding physician-patient interactions in the practice of primary pediatric care.

Anticipatory guidance involves three types of tasks: (1) gathering information, (2) establishing a therapeutic alliance, and (3) providing education and guidance. Many discussions of anticipatory guidance focus only on the third task. Without the first two, however, education and guidance are often misguided or ineffective.