Cold Comfort for Kids

How to ease your child’s runny nose or cough naturally

When Your Child
Needs Medicine

You’re tossing the cough and cold products, but you want to make sure you’re giving the proper dose of medications your child actually needs. Here’s how:

• Dispense medicines based on the child’s weight, not age.
• Use the smallest dose possible and round down, not up. (For example, if your child weighs 35 pounds, choose the 24-35-pound dose, not the next higher one.)
• Don’t give adult medicine to children or children’s medicine to infants.
• Take the label seriously if it says a medicine is not for children under a specific age.
• If your child spits out or vomits medicine so you’re unsure how much she actually got, consult her doctor before giving more.
• Ask your pharmacist for a dosing syringe. They’re easier and more accurate than the droppers that come with most medicines.

Now that children’s cough and cold medicines are subject to a government recall, can you use a smaller dose of adult medicine to ease your little one’s misery? The answer is emphatically NO.

“If healthy adults unintentionally take an extra dose of medication, it probably won’t hurt them. In children and babies, a small overdose can result in death,” says pharmacist Lauren Grantz of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. The facts are sobering: from 1969 through 2006, more than 120 children died after taking too much decongestant or antihistamine.

But it’s not just about dosing. Even if children’s cold and cough medicines eventually reappear on the market, you’re wise to avoid them, says Elizabeth Goff, M.D., a pediatrician at the hospital.

“These medicines don’t shorten the duration of the illness and probably don’t relieve symptoms either,” she says. In studies, cough and cold medicines performed no better than placebos (non-active medicines) at reducing symptoms in children. Decongestants tend to cause jitteriness and irritability and disrupt sleep. Antihistamines dry out the eyes and nose, causing nosebleeds, thirst and constipation.

What to use instead? Research suggests that a spoonful of honey at bedtime is a natural cough soother. (It’s safe only for children over age 1, and be sure to brush teeth afterward.) To ease nasal congestion, Goff recommends over-the-counter nasal saline drops and sprays. Follow up by running a humidifier or vaporizer, and offer your child lots of warm liquids and TLC. “It takes patience to let the body do its healing work,” she says.

Want to Know More about how to get a reluctant child to take medicine he needs? Call 610-402-CARE or click here.

Published from Healthy You Magazine, March-April 2008

ARTICLE TOOLS: