How to Treat Cold Symptoms in Toddlers

It's so hard to watch a toddler struggle to breathe and parents feel so helpless when their child is coughing, miserable and unable to sleep. Store shelves used to be lined with over-the-counter remedies to treat cold symptoms in toddlers. Adverse side effects caused removal of these items and doctors who used to prescribe medicine for toddlers with cold now advise parents to wait it out. Many parents have gone back to treating cold symptoms the way their parents and grandparents treated them, while others have discovered different remedies.

Things You'll Need

• Liquids
• Chicken soup
• Vapor rub
• Cool mist humidifier
• Eucalyptus or menthol oil
• Rubber bulb syringe
• Honey
• Warm salt water
• Saline solution
• Acetaminophen

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Instructions

• 1

  Make sure your toddler drinks plenty of fluids.

  Give your toddler extra fluids to drink. Make sure she drinks a lot of water and juice, and make her fruit smoothies. Use juice to make homemade popsicles.

• 2

  Chicken soup can ease your toddler's congestion.

  Feed your toddler chicken soup. It contains an amino acid that thins mucus to ease congestion and is another way to get more fluids into your child.

• 3

  Vapor rub can ease coughing so your toddler can sleep.

  Rub vapor rub onto your child's chest and throat. The camphor, menthol and eucalyptus oil in it can ease cough symptoms. Don't use vapor rub to treat toddlers younger than 2 without the doctor's permission.

• 4

  A humidifier or warm bath can moisten your toddler's nose lining.

  Run a cool mist humidifier in your toddler's room to put moisture in the air and in your child's dried out nose lining. Put a drop of menthol or eucalyptus oil, available at health stores, into the humidifier to ease congestion. Keep the humidifier very clean to avoid spreading germs.

• 5

  Honey can soothe your toddler's throat and ease coughing.

  Give your toddler 1/2 tsp. of honey. It will coat the throat and ease coughing. Older children can also suck on a lemon drop or throat lozenge to soothe sore throat and cough.

• 6

  A rubber bulb syringe cleans mucus from young toddlers noses.

  Help your child gargle with warm salt water to ease sore throat pain. Squirt saline solution into a toddler's nostrils to loosen dried mucus in the nose. Use a rubber bulb syringe to clean mucus from nostrils of toddlers too young to blow their noses.

• 7

  Give your toddler acetaminophen or ibuprofen if necessary to reduce fever and ease sore muscles, aches and pains caused by colds.