Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Works For Me Wednesday - Backwards Edition

Today Shannon at Rocksinmydryer is hosting a backwards edition of Works for me Wednesday. This means instead of me telling you something that works for me, I get to ask you about something I'm trying to figure out :)

So, here's the thing. We've been battling sickness here for the last week or so, and we've about kicked it, BUT L's still coughing, and it seems to be that she's coughing up mucous. And last night A woke me up complaining that her ear hurts. I've dosed her with the various natural remedies (oil in her ear to help with the pain, hemeopathics to kill the infection if there is one), but here's my question. In reading up on what to do, one thing that was mentioned as a preventative is to make sure to keep their noses cleared out when they have colds. And obviously one of the reasons L's coughing up so much mucous is because she's not blowing her nose to clear it out either. BUT no matter how "on top of them" I am, I don't know they need to blow their nose until they sniffle it back up into their nose, and then they can't blow it back out. So, anyone have any tried & true tips to get little kids to blow their noses?

To clarify, my kids know HOW to blow their nose, they just don't want to do it, so instead of blowing their nose they snuffle it back up inside, kwim?

4 comments:

Patterned Pants said...

We taught our kids to blow their noses by telling them to pretend they are blowing out candles. I even lit candles to help them understand the whole blowing out thing.

Now, when we are stuffy, I help with the blowing. Well, I hold the kleenex! I pinch one nostril shut and tell them to blow over and over again til it sounds clear, then do the same to the other side.

We also use saline to rinse occasionally, but the little ones don't like it. My 8 and 9 year old boys love it - they like to see who can get the biggest booger out. That grosses me out. My husband loves it... he's a nose dr!

Melissa Stover said...

my daughter won't blow her nose either so i'm no help.

thanks for entering my contest this week.

Becca~CapturingSimpleJoys said...

I have no idea if this will help you or not. My kids have recently started swimming lesson and one of the things they do to get the kids faces in the water is have them blow bubbles with their noses. You might try this in a basin of water just for fun and see how many bubbles they can make. They would have fun and get the hang of it in a fun way.
Of course they could also just end up snorting water UP their noses and end up couphing, sputtering and all of that!

Anonymous said...

With my daughter, she had a book that talked about animal sounds and said that rhinoscerous' "snort and snuff." We demonstrated this by blowing air through our noses, and she copied. This was when she was too young to blow enough air to actually blow her nose, but the response of blowing air through her nose became an established behavior when we asked her what rhinoscerous' did. Eventually, she was able to blow air forcefully enough through her nose. When she needs to blow, we hold a tissue to her nose and tell her to blow like a rhinoscerous. It works great!