We dedicate this manual to the conscientious parents whose quest for knowledge in the care and nurture of their offsprings are our goal, concern and commitment. Parenthood is the most important part of one’s life and good parenting plays a fundamental role in a healthy society. The last decade has seen considerable advances in the care of children and this book incorporates many recent advances. Though there are many such books, a comprehensive book brought out by a professional body like Indian Academy of Pediatrics and contributed by 34 renowned experts in their respective fields would be invaluable. Moreover, each chapter is reviewed by academicians of highest repute. This book is being published under the IAP President Action Plan 2015. We very much appreciate the vision of our President Dr S Sachidananda Kamath and Secretary General Dr Pravin Mehta for conceiving such an idea of an IAP book for parents, the first of its kind in the history of IAP. I sincerely thank Dr MKC Nair who has taken painstaking effort to meticulously edit each chapter word by word to make this a parental manual in the real sense. I also thank Sri Asokan N for his dedicated secretarial assistance. We on behalf of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics would like to place on record our appreciation and gratefully acknowledge the sincere work put forward by all contributors to make this book a reality. We are specially thankful to Mr Pawaninder Pal Vij (Director) Peepee Publishers and Distributors (P) Ltd for his dedication and commitment to bring out this book in a very short span of time in an excellent manner. We do sincerely hope this book will be a boon to all concerned in the care of children.