Steven Parker; pediatrician wrote guide with Dr. Spock

Later in the video, he says simply: "I always really liked kids. They're funny, they're interesting, they're hopeful. Kids are such a kick, you know, and I get to work with them every day. It's great."

If it was great for him, it was even better for the children he treated, their parents, and the young physicians he trained at Boston Medical Center over the past quarter century, colleagues said. Dr. Parker, who also was the last coauthor with Dr. Benjamin Spock of the book "Baby and Child Care," collapsed and died Monday as he arrived at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for outpatient treatment. He was 62 and lived in Jamaica Plain.

"He was the kind of person who didn't just hear you, but truly listened to you," said Dr. Marilyn Augustyn, a pediatrician colleague at the medical center. "That's how he was with patients and families, that's how he was with 2-year-old children, and that's how he was with 100-year-old grandparents."

Dr. Barry Zuckerman, a professor and chairman of the department of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center, said Dr. Parker "was a superb teacher. He was knowledgeable, he was articulate, and he would take subject matter we all knew and put it together in ways that were most helpful to the practicing clinician. It was not an ivy-towered presentation. The information was ivy tower, but it was transformed into something practical and useful."

Enthusiastic about all life's offerings, Dr. Parker traveled with his wife to exotic locations and collected folk art, and he was ardent enough about his online fantasy league basketball team that when it won the title last year, he counted it among his greatest accomplishments.

"He got a virtual trophy," said his wife, Karen. "For him, that was one of the high points of his life. He was ecstatic."

The virtual accolade was only fitting for Dr. Parker, who in the past several years became a vocal proponent of viewing the Internet as a vital medical tool. Start your own blogs, he urged colleagues, and use everything from e-mail to instant messaging to be there when pediatric patients and their families need you.

"About two weeks ago, he gave a talk at a conference for us on what it was like to be a cyber doctor," Augustyn said. "He talked about how the physician of the future can't be afraid of technology. He said that to really serve families, we as a profession need to figure out our role in the 21st century, and it was going to involve technology."

Still, Dr. Parker was just as adept at face-to-face conversations with his young patients, their families, or the medical colleagues he ran into each day.

"He was thoughtful and when we would discuss issues related to our work, it would be both stimulating and challenging," Zuckerman said. "He also had a great, cynical sense of humor, which I really enjoyed. Any conversation was a combination of some serious, thoughtful discussion interjected with humor and quips. He just did it naturally, and I think that's what made him a terrific colleague."

Dr. Parker grew up in Detroit, received a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School.

He began a private practice, then spent a two-year fellowship in developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Children's Hospital in Boston with T. Berry Brazelton, the influential Harvard Medical School pediatrician.

During the fellowship, Dr. Parker met Karen Kemper, who was working at Children's, and they married in May 1983.

"He and I were really, really close - we were best friends," she said.

They traveled all over the world, but "every year, we went to three places and stayed in the same hotel room: St. Bart, which is his favorite place on earth, and Paris and New Orleans," she said. "He had already made reservations for next year in St. Bart, he loved it so much."

The fellowship experience with Brazelton prompted Dr. Parker to work at Boston City Hospital, which later became Boston Medical Center, and to teach at the Boston University School of Medicine. In 1994, he became director of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the medical center, and he founded the comprehensive care program, which became known nationally for its family-centered approach to treating children with developmental disabilities.

Dr. Parker also helped direct Healthy Steps, a national program that helps foster the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children by including an early childhood specialist in pediatric practices. And he was co-editor of the book "Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics: A Handbook for Primary Care."

"He was many other things, but whenever he introduced himself, he always said he was 'Steve Parker, pediatrician,' " Augustyn said.

With a gift for turning a phrase, Dr. Parker could use a sentence or two to teach volumes.

"As physicians, we take the vow: 'First do no harm,' " he wrote in his WebMD blog on Jan. 15. "That goes for you parents also."

In an interview with the Globe in 1998, when the edition of "Baby and Child Care" he coauthored was published after Spock died, Dr. Parker talked about how he and the famous baby doctor parted ways on one recommendation in the book. Spock had advocated a diet for children that included no dairy products.

"Personally," Dr. Parker said in the interview, "I think a childhood without ice cream just isn't worth it."

In addition to his wife, Dr. Parker leaves a brother, Philip of West Bloomfield, Mich.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today in the Forsyth Chapel at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.