Terrified 3 year old

Ok, I am normally on this site moaning and whining about my own asthma which is actually quite mild when I read what others have to cope with. My youngest daughter has just been diagnosed with suspected asthma due to constant coughing and wheezyness. She has a ventolin with a spacer and mask but is very scared! Everytime she sees it, she screams and cries and it is a 2 man job holding her still to give it. I have stuck stickers on the spacer etc but it is just impossible. Any ideas? As a child, she is hard work anyway, her tantrums are amazing and this is what she does when she objects to something but I need to win this one

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Hi Kat,

Might sound like a dumb suggestion but have you tried making it part of a reward scheme? thinking back to my son who had tantrums real bad at a older age though of 4 over it , all the things he hated doing we put on a reward chart with stickers and if you choose a reward that they cannot say no to, something they love to eat, do or a place to go to say then it might work? he then got a sticker every time he took it and soon got his reward and then started all over again, also we also tried making taking medicine a ""norm"" in the house so instead of me taking mine in private I openly took it in front of him, and my husband who does not have asthma just used to pretend, so eventually he became less scared as he saw us do it all the time, we went a bit over the top so it was visable prob 20 times a day (in pretend) in the begining then it just became easier as it was like any other thing that happened in the house...

Snowy

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Have bumped thread for you with some ideas

Basically persist pin down if have to don't give in and they get used to it. Give in and it becomes another 3yrold tantrum thing!

Marmite

(mum to 3yr old asthmatic twins!)

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hi i now this may seem silly but say to your child are we going to go into space in our spaceship and in order to do tht we need our special mask on and pretend tht its an adventure this worked on my son who thought it was really funny also let her see you using it even if u have pretend i know this as my youngest has an blue inhaler he has had it since he was 3ish as he gets llots of chest infections and now they r quierying tht he maybe asthmatic too and he has never used the mask bit as he is used to seeing my other son use his and he learned though him hope tht helps ruth

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Thanks everyone, I have tried now most of the above and things are getting a little better depending on her mood! We have named the contraption puff puff and what makes it easier is that my cousins toddler has one too so my cousin gave it to her child in front of mine which I think helped too. We will keep plodding! I think asthma should be banned!