Do I convince my two year old to blow her nose, without losing my sanity? Since she started daycare she's had the coughs and sniffles on a regular basis. She coughs primarily because she will not blow her nose. I have tried using the bulb syringe but it's a battle and it doesn't really work with her now that she's bigger. I have also blown my nose with her, attempting to make it a game, it doesn't work...
Any tricks?
Continue to model it for her- and make it seem like a big-girl thing to do. Don't baby it down at all. Show her that this is what big kids do to protect themselves from germs. If you want to talk about germs you can put vegetable oil on her hands, and then sprinkle cinnamon- calling the cinnamon the germs. When she washes her hands with just water the "germs" stay, but when she uses soap, they will come off.
Actually, my trick is something that hasn't been mentioned. My son especially suffers from allergies, so we found that if he needed to blow his nose when he was younger (he's now 2) we simply put saline nose spray in his nose. At worst he would sneeze all the junk out, but after a while he actually started blowing his nose. Now he thoroughly enjoys blowing his nose even when he needs to. Saline is harmless, dries things up a bit, but don't use too much. It has two benefits, no more boogies on the hands, and no more runny noses. Good luck!
The only way I was able to get my oldest to learn how to blow her nose was with a candle! LOL! I made her close her mouth and got her to try and blow out the candle with her nose (I had a tissue handy). After that she got the idea!
I did one nose hole at a time. Plug one (finger on the side pushing in), blow. Plug the other, blow. My son's problem was the fact that he felt like I was suffocating him when I plugged both his nose holes and covered his mouth with a kleenex. One nose hole at a time, with the kleenex held on the other side - he felt ok.
S.
Don't let her know that the bulb doesn't work and just threaten her with it...Tell her that if she's not going to be a big girl and blow her nose then you're going to have to use the bulb. It worked immediately for my daughter when she was only about 18 months! Good luck!
I feel you on this all the way!! My son was the same way! It sounds strange but i would tell my son to blow the bugs out of his nose then show him the "bug poop" (his snot of course)! He thought it was crazy that he had a bug in his nose pooping, so now when i need him to blow his nose we blow out "the bug poop". I know its weird but hey it works for him!! He loves seeing the "bug poop"!! Good luck with yours!!
A., there is an article on nose-blowing on babycenter.com:
http://www.babycenter.com/400_when-will-my-child-be-old-e...
Keep trying....kind of going through that with our 3 yr old ,Ryan. He has had a runnie nose since he started the 11 off and on. He does not get tissue and often wipes it on the back of hand |yuck| anyways. I just keep a box of good tissue around and even bring it on the go. Eventually they pick it up, Morgan (who is almost 5) started doing it at 3 ish.
i'm a speech therapist, and they actually make nose whistles to teach children to control their nasal airstream. i'm sure if you did a google search for one, it would be easy to find.
