How do you help your child to manage their asthma?
Children often feel more confident and in control if they are encouraged to help manage their own asthma. Even very young children can start doing little things to help care for themselves.
If you have a young child, encourage them to carry their reliever inhaler with them wherever they go. Why not give it a pet name and allow them to decorate it with stickers? This will make carrying it more fun.
If you child is older, you can encourage them to get into a routine of taking their preventer inhaler and ask them to keep track of their asthma symptoms using emojis in their phone calendar. The more your child engages with their own asthma care, the more relaxed and confident you’ll both feel.
Hi there, I have a grown up child with asthma, she was originally diagnosed with it at 2 years old. I have had asthma since I was a young child too. When she was even very little I tried to make sure she knew when to take her inhalers and what they did. I did obviously help her, and when she got bigger watched to make sure she was using her spacer correctly. And nagged occasionally to make sure she had the medicine she needed.
I think the trigger point for a lot of children is when they leave home to go to college. I have had to deal with a lot of tearful phone calls, with questions like " when did your inhaler run out" and why did you stop taking the medicine, answer, "I thought I didn't have asthma anymore". 18 months ago she ended up in the emergency room with pneumonia (not covid) but partially because she "hadn't had time to see a doctor and renew her prescriptions". I hope this was the final wake-up call.
I have to say that as a 20 year old, I was exactly same, stopped taking medicine, I was going to be fine etc, and then getting very unwell. I don't think I was truly compliant with asthma medicines until I was in my 30's and had been very unwell with asthma.
I think part of the problem is when we, (people with asthma) feel really well, its easy to forget about it, and the bad times, and that the daily inhalers etc are what keeping us well.
I don't know if this is any help, but I really think it is the teenagers we need to worry about.
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