Asthma and children: as they grow

As your child grows their asthma may change its symptoms, treatment and severity. Your involvement will also change. For example, you will have to be responsible for your toddler taking their medication, but as the child grows, this responsibility is gradually passed onto the child. This section deals with issues specific to certain age groups.

The Baby years:

When you have a baby try to give it the best start in life that you possibly can. Not by showering it with gifts but by making a safe, healthy home. It means that when pregnant and breast feeding think about the drugs you take at this time - not only prescribed medication but also tobacco, alcohol and recreational drugs. Do you need them? Check with your doctor or pharmacist about the safety of all medications that you take. For example, at the time of this writing, it has not yet been proven that it is safe to take Flixotide during pregnancy or while breast feeding. The benefit to the asthmatic mother must be weighed up against the possibility of health problems for the baby.
Other tips for having a happy healthy baby are:

Breast feed if you are able
Don't introduce solid foods too early
Don't let anyone smoke around your baby
Treat colds and chest infections quickly
Keep the baby's room free from dust and mould

Toddlers:

Despite doing all the right things asthma can still develop however, it is often not diagnosed as asthma until the child is two or three years old. Prior to this it may be considered "wheezy bronchitis" or dismissed as unimportant because it may only surface when the child has a cold.

All infants, even those without asthma, have airways with a tendency to narrow when breathing out and this creates a mild problem in lung gas exchange. Asthma makes it worse.

Very small children do not have secondary passages between airways and air sacs like adults do. These secondary passages can be used when the primary ones are obstructed. They also have a weak diaphragm so the inspiratory muscles tend to suck in the whole rib cage, making breathing more difficult when the child breathes more quickly and deeply, as in an asthma attack.

Lungs grow at an enormous rate for the first few years but unfortunately until the child is approximately six years old airways are narrow compared to the volume of air required. Small children also have more mucus glands than older children or adults which can produce substantial amounts of mucus further clogging airways.

Very small children have a lot of reactions to food triggers, ice-cream for example, which cause wheezing. As they grow older these reactions lessen and so it may appear that the child is no longer an asthmatic if they stop getting wheezy when they eat ice-cream.

When you leave your Child with a baby-sitter or nursery, you will need to check that:

they can cope with an asthmatic child
they know or are willing to learn what to do if an attack strikes
they are willing to administer medicine if necessary

Middle Years 5 - 12:

Asthma symptoms may subside considerably in this age bracket because as children grow up, their lungs develop, muscles strengthen and their immune system changes. They often stop having reactions to the food triggers they had when they were smaller. This leads to the popular misconception that children grow out of asthma at seven.

However, some children begin to develop asthma at this age as allergies to inhaled substances start to be a problem. Unfortunately, this problem seems to be more life-long than food allergies.

Almost anything can trigger asthma but some of the most common causes are having a chest infection, a virus or being subjected to cigarette smoke, chemical cleaners, chlorine, fly spray, strong scented soap powders or cold wind. Allergies to things such as milk, cats, read more