Cold and flu season tips: Best of Parent Hacks
Your kid has a cold or flu. Ugh. These tips should help smooth the bumpy (snotty! itchy! whiny!) cold-and-flu season road a bit. (We add to this list as new tips come in, so check back often.) -- Asha
Helpful tip from our sponsor
When your little ones are sick, you don't have time to get bogged down by cold and flu symptoms yourself.
While you can't cure a virus once you've contracted it, you can manage your symptoms. To keep you going, try a maximum strength OTC medication that contains both pain relievers and nasal decongestants.
Colds and congestion
- Use a vegetable steamer or a crock pot as a stand-in for a humidifier
- Lip balm protects tissue-irritated skin
- Baby wipes are good for parents' noses, too
- Empty formula cans make perfect bedside table wastebaskets
- How to make baby nose-wiping...fun?
- Handkerchiefs are gentler on runny noses than tissue
- Oversize long-sleeved shirt as parental snot guard
- Reuse infant incline pillow when your toddler has a stuffy nose
- Nosefrida nasal aspirator: A Parenthacker tells all
- Plug-in vapor thingies help congested kids breathe at night
- Use tweezers to grab crusty boogers
- Diaper cream soothes irritated noses
- The best way to wipe snot from a baby's nose
- Cut-off sock "leg warmers" keep sleeves snot-free
Hacks for a cough and sore throat
- Bedtime sore throat soother: Warm milk and honey
- Calm coughing without medication
- Indian 'toddy' helps sickies get to sleep
- Hot lemonade soothes a tickly throat
- Hot salt water quiets coughing
Fever
- Turn temperature-taking with an ear thermometer into a game of telephone
- Soothe a fever with a damp washcloth kept bedside
Throwing up
- Is the kid going to throw up? "Read" his lips.
- Stomach bugs and popsicles
- Vomit hack: Keep the training potty nearby
Staying hydrated
- Oral syringe helps kids "sip" water without completely waking up
- Bag clips keep freezer pops out of the plastic and lickable
- Tricks for keeping toddlers hydrated
- Make your own oral rehydration solution
Medicine dosage and storage
- Use extreme caution when giving cough- or cold medicine to children under 2
- Toolbox + padlock = safe, portable medicine storage
- Yucky-tasting medicine goes down easier with a chaser of flavoring syrup
- Entice your sickie with a medicine-dipped lollipops
- Mix medicine into Jell-O Smoothie Snacks to get it down the hatch
- How to administer eyedrops and take the temperature of a squirmy toddler? Talk amongst yourselves.
- Track medicine dosage right on the bottle
- Smaller dose of "children's" medication can stand in for the more expensive "infant" version
- Apply antibiotic ointment while the kid's asleep
- Bottle nipple as medicine dispenser
Preventive medicine
We've got a bunch more keep-the-kids-healthy hacks in the Health archives...have a look!
