Help a Sick Kid Feel Better Fast
Sarah R. Moore
September 20, 2019
After a week of my sick kid having what I thought was the common cold, I finally took her to the doctor to be sure it wasn’t something serious. She’d had a sore throat and a fever along with lots of other cold symptoms. She’d been happy enough to chill out on the couch with me, so at first, I thought it was nothing to worry about. We tried some home remedies that usually help her when she’s sick, but this time, she wasn’t improving at all.
As it turns out, she had RSV, a sinus infection, and parainfluenza. Studies show that, unlike many viruses that run their course in 24 hours, RSV can be contagious for as many as four weeks (1). Hello, plastic bubble. And she didn’t just have RSV, so I thought we’d be in for a long-haul recovery.
Home Remedies that Helped My Sick Kid Get Healthy—Fast
I’ll preface this by saying it isn’t medical advice. That said, it’d be pretty hard to find fault with these ideas, but do run them past your doctor to see if they’re a match for your sick kid.
Aside from the wonderful benefits of touch and snuggles on health, here are the home remedies that (ready for it?) got my child back on her feet within four days of starting them. Four days; not four weeks! Oh, and for what it’s worth, my doctor approved them for us. I’m not a fan of many of the side effects of standard meds (my child is very sensitive to them, as am I), so we prefer natural remedies whenever possible. (To be clear, we take them when we need to.)
Home Remedy #1 Almost-Too-Good-To-Be-True Anti-Inflammatory Foods (but they work, fortunately)
Some of the best health news I’ve ever heard is that dark chocolate (above 70% cocoa) is more effective for
coughs than codeine. Score! Did I need any help encouraging my sick child to have some of her favorite dark chocolate? Not one bit. We keep plenty on hand for “emergencies” of all kinds. (afflinks) And of course, I took some preventatively! To be honest, I doubt it works preventatively, but it made me happy.
Further, as easy as it is to get a sick kid to eat chocolate, it’s just as simple to convince her to have some pure, raw honey (make sure you don’t give honey to a child who’s less than a year old because it can lead to infant botulism). Offering her an immune-boosting garlic and honey combination was an easy sale. She ate it straight, just garlic chopped small and dipped in honey, on a spoon. She also
ate it on toast. Along with that, she downed plenty of anti-inflammatory blueberries and fresh ginger tea.
There are lots of savory anti-inflammatory foods, too, but these sweet ones sure didn’t hurt her spirits. How nice that some of what she needed most, were things she wanted the most.
Home Remedy #2: Our Favorite Natural Medicines (with a very helpful hint)
Some of these are home remedies, and some are natural remedies that are, according to my doctor, “herbals.” I didn’t realize how easy we had it when our daughter was a baby and we could just pull out the brilliant (albeit gross) NoseFrida and give her some dissolvable cold tablets. Now that she’s older, she has stronger opinions about what she’ll ingest.
For general immune-boosting power
She loved taking these easy-to-administer and dissolvable pellets at the onset of her symptoms, and she
never turns down sweet elderberry syrup. You can make a homemade version of elderberry syrup for much less money if you have the right ingredients. With our doctor’s guidance, we temporarily increased her vitamin D3 (we like this version because it’s an imperceptible liquid we can add to her drink).
For coughs
She loves her daytime and nighttime cough medicines. I love the nighttime version because it has just enough strength, along with a bit of melatonin, to help my sick kid sleep without coughing at night. The daytime version of Zarbee’s is worth keeping around, too; as is their version with individual portions (great for when we’re ready to leave the house but concerned about coughing).
For sinus problems
Finally, because of the sinus infection, she needed something effective, but we weren’t keen on antibiotics
as a first defense. (Of course, we’d take them if we had to.) Although she didn’t love the flavor of this sinus medicine, oh my–her sinus symptoms disappeared almost immediately after she started it. Knowing that our sense of smell strongly affects how we taste food, she agreed to let me hold a medjool date (her favorite sweet treat) under her nose while she took the medicine. We practiced “shots” of water beforehand, and that also helped when it came time for medicine. The “tricking her senses with sweet smell” and “water shot practice” approach worked wonders, fortunately. That’s my helpful hint to you.
Our doctor also showed us a video of this “gentler” version of a sinus rinse for kids. We’re not there yet, but close.
For parents trying to stay healthy (or who didn’t manage to escape the germs)
I took vitamin D3, elderberry syrup, and these AMAZING anti-viral herbs, and I managed to stay
completely healthy. The herbs aren’t cheap, but there are a ton of them in the bottle. They last a really long time, and in my opinion, staying healthy is worth every penny. (I did the math now, just for fun. Let’s say I took 10 of them throughout the duration of her illness. Would I pay a few bucks to avoid going down hard and feeling miserable? Absolutely.) That said, all of the kids’ items I’ve listed above are also available in adult versions on the “Food and Health” section of our site, if you need them.
Home Remedy #3: Gentle Movement
Our doctor pointed out the importance of balancing enough stillness with enough movement as a home remedy to clear my daughter’s lungs. From what I’ve heard, if we’re too sedentary, the “gunk” can get
stuck in our lungs; risks include increased inflammation and potential for pneumonia. No thank you! Since my girl didn’t want to leave the couch, I grabbed my exercise ball and helped her do some gentle, lung clearing, and immune boosting stretches over it. She thought it was wildly fun (well, as “wild” as someone who doesn’t want to move can get), and she said the stretches made her chest feel better. It seemed to ease her coughing, so I’ll take her word for it.
Home Remedy #4: Humid Air
The humid air from inside the bathtub is a good way to keep a sick kid still for awhile; there’s o
nly so far she can go in there. Semi-immersion in warm water helped release the gunk in her lungs. Although she coughed more, the coughs became more productive.
At night, we used a really effective and adjustable cool mist humidifier. I love how quiet it is, and that it has a 12- and 24-hour timer option if I forget to turn it off in the morning when my mind is on caring for the sick kid.
Home Remedy #5: A One-Way Ticket to Stay Home
No matter how bored we got, we stayed home. We certainly didn’t want to inflict the Plague of Blaaaah (as I dubbed it) on anyone else. I picked up enough library books to run the entire length of our house, and we read every single one. There’s just no substitute for staying still and letting a sick child’s body heal.
Now, How To Entertain a Sick Kid for (Potentially) Weeks on End?
The home remedy part is easy compared to figuring out what to do at home for weeks. And fortunately, we didn’t have to figure it out. She got better. Quickly.
As a mama, the home remedies that get us up and out as fast as possible, are exactly the ones I like best. As they say, prevention is the best medicine. It feels so good to be well.
Source 1: https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/about/transmission.html
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