Tips for Parenting a Child With Asthma Based on My Personal Experiences

As a former child asthmatic, I understand what it is like to navigate asthma as a child. My parents did a good job despite neither of them having asthma themselves. However, there are things I think they could have done better – things I know now in retrospect. Likewise, I believe my childhood asthma experience has made me a great asthma dad.

3 tips for parenting a child with asthma

Based on my own experience as an asthmatic and asthma dad, here are my tips for being the best asthma parent you can be.

Monitor medication usage

Why do I say this? When I was around 10, my pediatrician prescribed my first rescue inhaler. For a year or so, my parents monitored how often I used it very closely. If I was short of breath, I had to make them aware of it. They would then give me my inhaler and ensure that I was using it correctly – and not more often than prescribed.

But then they decided to allow me more responsibility. While it’s important for a child to learn how to manage their asthma on their own, my parents stopped monitoring my inhaler use altogether. They had no clue that I was using it way more often than prescribed. Based on this experience comes my first tip.

TIP #1: Keep track of your child's inhaler use. If you notice they are using it more often than prescribed, take that as a sign that their asthma is poorly controlled and contact their asthma doctor.

Learn the signs of uncontrolled asthma and what to do when you spot them

As a child, I was the king of hiding how I was feeling. I did not do this because I enjoyed not being able to breathe. I did it because I had anxiety, and I had empathy for my parents. I didn’t want to bother them – again. While it’s nice that I had empathy for my parents, it’s not good that I feared confiding in them, especially when I was short of breath.

Sadly, this is what I did. Irrational, you may think. But I was later diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, which made me hesitant to seek help. While your child may not be as reluctant to seek help as I was, they may keep how they are feeling to themselves, even if they are short of breath. Based on this experience comes my second tip.

TIP #2: Learn the signs and symptoms of asthma flare-ups and what to do when you spot them. Be aware of symptoms such as wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath, and chest tightness. Understand that inhaler overuse is also a sign of poorly controlled asthma.

Are they using their controller inhalers exactly as prescribed?

When I was a child, doctors basically treated asthma only when it was flaring up. There were controller inhalers and efforts to control asthma, but I was told to stop using them once I felt better. That’s just how asthma was treated back then. Even when I was told to use it, I sometimes forgot because I was a child, because I got busy with school, or because I didn’t want to use it in front of the other kids.

This was not good because controller inhalers should be used every day, as we now know. This leads me to my third tip.

TIP #3: Make sure your child is taking their controller inhalers every day, exactly as prescribed. Evidence shows that using controller inhalers as prescribed will help your child obtain good asthma control.

Stay tuned for more tips

I have more tips. Lots more tips. Stay tuned, as I plan on offering more tips in a future post.

Does your child have asthma? What questions do you have about parenting a child with asthma?