Austin Dowd is the father and primary caregiver of two boys, Emory and Kellen. He’s a founder of Triangle Stay At Home Dads in Raleigh-Durham, NC, and a board member for the National At-Home Dad Network.

There’s a stool in the exam room at our sons’ pediatrician’s office. Its short, covered in black leather and has six caster wheels on the bottom that allow it to roll all over the room. If we are in the room alone for more than two minutes one of my two sons will jump on it chest first and pretend to be superman. Before long the stool becomes a space ship, a high cliff over a lava filled crater, or they just lay on top and spin it round like a carousel. Its the spinning I really like about the stool.

When the door opens the boys pick either a spot on the bench with my wife, or next to me on the exam table. Their doctor washes his hands, pulls out his tablet, the stool becomes a stool again and thats where he sits down to begin our appointment.

After a minute or two of banter we dive into the questions about why we’re there and a little dance between me, my wife and our doctor starts. A flurry of questions and answers takes place between us, the whole time that little stool spins back and forth so that he can listen to what my wife says on the bench and then to me on the table.

After years we’ve built a rapport with our pediatrician where he understands that my wife and I are equal advocates for our sons. He listens and engages with each of us on the areas of our sons’ life that we know best, the whole time swiveling, spinning, rolling on that stool.

That stool isn’t special though. In fact, I think every doctor’s office I’ve been in for the last five years has had an identical one. Which is why I never could figure out why some of them don’t spin.

A doctor comes in and sits on an identical stool that seems only capable of pointing in one direction. The questions are all pointed to my wife, despite the fact that half the answers are coming from behind their shoulder, from me.

Their patient came in with a team of advocates, not just one, but for some reason they bought a piece of furniture that only lets them talk to half of that team. Now mom gets to not only bear the burden of advocating for our son alone, but also has to be the middle man for information between the doctor and me. 

The family landscape is changing and dads are starting to see more value in picking up a bigger piece of the parenting pie. They’re learning the language of preschoolers, becoming experts on their children’s favorite foods and how they got the playground bumps and bruises. 

They are holding the keys to information any good health care provider needs, so bring them into the dance, get a stool that swivels.

Dr. David L. Hill is a pediatrician at KidzCare Wilmington, the chair of the AAP Council on Communications and Media, and the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro.

Can we talk about the magazines in your office? I’m not going to dis how old they are. No one has time to refresh the waiting room periodicals weekly, so let’s just assume that they feature fall fashion tips. For 2011. But do they also include the best pickup trucks of 2013? Predictions for who’s going to make it into Super Bowl XLV? (Spoiler alert: Steelers, Packers.) The point is this: with dads, grandfathers, uncles, co-dads, and, yes, moms’ boyfriends, showing up in unprecedented numbers at pediatric visits, are you doing everything you can to make men comfortable in your office?

There is a ways yet to go, but dads are catching up with moms when it comes to hours spent on childcare. At the same time, traditional models of family have given way to much more fluid interpretations of what constitutes a family. This presents pediatricians with a challenge: we must be able to communicate with the wide variety of people who arrive in our office as our patients’ caretakers. That means looking at every aspect of our organizations and asking how accommodating they are to all kinds of parents.

Let me give an example: when I wrote Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro in 2011, I was a recently divorced father working my way toward remarriage. I took personal offense at a grocery store parking space reserved for “Mothers with Children,” although perhaps I should have been honored at the implied confidence that I could shepherd three young kids and a load of groceries across acres of asphalt without risking an SUV backing over any of us. School forms, too, make me nuts: there are address and phone number lines for “Mother” and for “Father,” but none for Stepmother or Stepfather, Father and Father, or Mother and Mother. The barriers for nontraditional families in our offices often extend far beyond fashion magazines and pink wallpaper, in ways that parents routinely encounter and providers don’t.

In addition to considering your office environment and intake forms, look at the biases that might be built into your own behavior. When you’re lucky enough to have both parents in the exam room, do you engage each of them equally? I find that even as an advocate for paternal involvement I still have to make a conscious effort to address questions and advice to dad when mom is in the room. I want him to come to the next visit, so I have to work to make sure he feels included this time! If he seems disengaged, remember, he may be feeling awkward or uncertain about how you perceive his role in childcare. I suggest an icebreaker: ask who he favors in Superbowl XLV.