The first response by most families to many illnesses in their children has been found to be the use of non-prescribed drugs. The objectives of this cross sectional study were to measure the prevalence of of self-medicating children by their mothers, to identify some underlying factors of this problem and to assess mother’s knowledge and practices of the used drugs. An interview questionnaire was completed by 1124 mothers attending the Primary Health Care vaccination clinics in Benha City. 68.9% of the studied mothers self-medicated their children, 67.2% did not know the correct dose of the used drugs, 87.9% had no idea about the side effects, precautions or the contraindications. 82.4% of them used the drugs until the complaint disappears. 39.7% did not know if self-medicating children is potentially dangerous. Age of mother, level of education, residence, occupation, family type and the attitude of father were the significant predictors of self-medicating children. Child factors as age of the sick child and number of children per family were the independent predictors. At the level of the health care facility, the distance of the health care unit and the waiting time were significant predictors (P<0.05 for all).