For parents, managing your child's asthma can be quite a challenge, but with enough knowledge of the condition and support from health care professionals, you can help make it easier for you and your child.
Developing a simple yet well-thought out plan can ensure that your child receives the proper medicines and therapy to keep their condition under control.
Here are a few tips on how you can create an effective action plan to better address your child's asthma.
1. Make sure that your child has access to enough asthma medicines and supplies.
While asthma is considered to be one of the most common long-term diseases among children, it is still difficult to know how or when an attack is triggered.
You can help alleviate your child's condition during a sudden asthma attack by making sure that they have access to enough medicines even when they are on their own.
Walk your kid through the process of asking for a refill of their controller meds at the pharmacy so that they can pick them up themselves when they run out of supplies.
2. Develop an asthma care plan and always keep it handy.
Another way to prevent confusion during a sudden asthma attack is by creating an asthma care plan for you and your child to follow whenever it is needed. This can be handy especially when your kid begins to show signs of an impending attack.
By devising an easy-to-follow guide and explaining it to your child, you can help them become more familiar with how they can address asthma symptoms effectively.
You can also inform relatives and officials at your child's school about the asthma care plan to make sure that they are aware of what they can do to help your child if an asthma flare-up occurs while he or she is under their care.
3. Inspect your home for any potential asthma triggers.
Asthma triggers are substances or objects that can irritate people's air passages and cause a flare-up of asthma. Children may react differently to various forms of triggers especially as they grow older.
Some of the most common asthma triggers include animal saliva and dander, molds, cockroaches, foods, medicines, grasses, pollens and microscopic dust mites that inhabit pillows, carpets and house dust.
Other known irritants include smoke, aerosols, perfumes, hair spray, air fresheners and paint fumes.
Finding out which specific household objects can trigger an asthma flare-up in your child may take some time and effort, but once you determine patterns in the attacks, you can implement measures to prevent such incidents.
4. Help your child understand the importance of taking their medicines regularly.
Making sure that your child regularly takes their controller medicines can be tricky especially when they're still very young. You may have to devise ways to constantly remind them that they need to take their meds at certain points of the day.
Keep your child well aware by setting reminders on their computers or smartphones. You can also hang a message in the kitchen or bathroom.
You can also ask your health care provider for asthma medicines in small containers. This allows your child to always carry them around in their pockets.
It is important that your child is committed to taking their controller meds in order to lessen the likelihood of an asthma attack.
5. Schedule regular asthma checkups for your child.
Aside from your child's regular visits to the doctor, it is advisable to set separate appointments for asthma checkups as well. Not only does this help keep you aware on the development of your child's condition, it also ensures that you have the support of a professional healthcare team in managing his or her asthma.
Photo: Salim Fadhley | Flickr
