There are many kinds of guides given to parents in a child health clinic. We were contacted by a public health nurse who asked us to create a new and compact guide about 1-3-year-old children’s development and about parenting.

The aim was to describe parents’ experiences of the current guides and how to develop better customer-oriented guides. The purpose was to get information on what kind of subjects guides should contain and how the guides should be improved.

This study used a qualitative method. The material was collected by interviewing three parents as a group with a theme-based interview. These parents were clients in one of the child health clinics in Oulu. The interview included two themes, children’s development and parenting. The interview was recorded and then transcribed. The material was then analysed with a material-oriented inductive content analysis.

The results of this study showed that parent’s experiences of the guides were quite similar. A good guide should respond to today’s challenges in parenting. It should pay attention to individuality of the children and the families. The guide should support parenthood. In addition it should have a clear layout. The results also showed that the parents wished to have more information about peer support, multiculturalism and the media.

Based on the results, we suggest that these subjects should be studied further. Future subjects of study could be: 1) the needs that an immigrant has as a parent in Finland, 2) parents’ experiences of the significance of peer support in parenting, 3) the sufficiency of the child health clinic’s support and guidance to the parents about getting peer support, 4) parents’ awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of the media for children’s development.