Health

Parent Pointers: Tips For Parents of Kids With Asthma

From Pat Bass, About.com GuideJune 10, 2010

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When you think about it, one of our most important jobs as a parent is to make sure our kids are positioned to be the best adults they can possibly be. Teenagers, especially, need to learn to make responsible decisions about their asthma. With summer here, our asthmatic kids will be off doing a whole host of different things. Consider these tips to help your teen with asthma.

Responsibility: It is important to increase your child's responsibility as they get older. You cannot be there forever or every minute of every day. By increasing your child's freedom and responsibility in their own self-care, they will hopefully learn to take better care of their own asthma. This freedom and responsibility, however, needs to be tempered by supervision and restrictions as well.
Difficulty: Some teenagers find it difficult to accept their asthma diagnosis.This can make parental guidance and support both all that much more difficult and important.
Goal Setting: As your child enters the teenage years, they should actively participate in their asthma management plan. This would include peak flow monitoring, preventive medications, and rescue management. As a parent you should stress the consequences of not managing asthma appropriately. As a parent, you need to step back and let your child take control of their asthma, but be available for communication and intervention if necessary.
Assume your child is a risk taker: Teenagers frequently stop their asthma medications or take them less frequently than they should. They also will resist monitoring peak flows as you and their doctor would like. Making your child's asthma action plan as simple as possible may help with this.