It’s that time of year again: the air’s getting cooler, leaves are starting to change, and kids are coming home from school with coughs and runny noses. Sometimes it seems impossible to keep our little ones from getting sick. I mean… it’s not like we can follow them to school! But don’t despair. There are a few things you can do to keep your family sniffle-free this fall.
Teach your kids about germs and how they're spread. Good hygiene habits are much more likely to stick if kids understand that they need to protect themselves from the yucky things in the air that make them sick.
Show your kids the importance of hygiene by making hand washing a regular routine. Involve the whole family! Make sure everyone washes up before and after meals, after you get home from being out, and after coughing and sneezing. If kids see that hand washing is something that everyone needs to do regularly, they are more likely to keep the same good habits at school.
Many of us learned to cover our coughs and sneezes with our hands, but that’s an easy way to spread germs straight to the next thing we touch. Teach kids to cough and sneeze into their elbow, putting their arm in front of their face like a vampire holding his cape. The “vampire cough” is a great way to keep those germs from spreading.
Create a germ-busting kit that’s easy to store in a backpack or lunchbox. Include items like a bottle of hand sanitizer in a fun, seasonal scent and a travel-size pack of tissues. Keeping tissues handy encourages kids to use them to wipe their noses instead of the dreaded shirtsleeve.
What if your kid still comes home with the unmistakable signs of a cold? If that happens, visit your local pharmacy to have your child’s medicine flavored with FLAVORx. They can choose the way they want their medication to taste, so getting the medicine down will be so much easier.