California healthy and ready to work transition health care guide: developmental guidelines for teaching health care self-care skills to children.

This article presents developmental guidelines that can be used by parents and nurses for teaching children health care self-care skills. These guidelines are intended to provide a framework for instructing parents and nurses about the developmentally appropriate skills children can learn to become self sufficient in managing their own health care needs. The guidelines are based on the developmental frameworks of Piaget and Erikson and self-care models of Orem. Although general in scope, these guidelines can be individualized to the needs of each child.