Monitoring Asthma

Monitoring You Child’s Asthma Symptoms

When your child’s asthma is well-controlled, he /she will have few (if any) asthma symptoms or attacks and, in short, should be able to do anything a child without asthma can do. In addition, your child should:

• Rarely (if ever) have a nighttime cough
• Rarely (if ever) wake up at night because of coughing or shortness of breath
• Be able to exercise about as long as other children, with little, if any, couch, wheezing, chest tightness, or trouble breathing
• Handle colds as well as other children

If your child’s asthma is worsening, he or she may experience:

• Cough at night
• Waking up at night because of coughing or chest tightness
• Increased cough, wheezing, and/or trouble breathing with exercise, or reduced ability to exercise because of asthma
• Cough or wheeze at rest (reading, watching TV, etc. – not while doing homework!)

If your child is having a severe asthma attack, he or she may experience:

• Severe shortness of breath, rapid or shallow breathing, labored breathing, and/or sucking in the skin between the ribs or at the base of the neck
• Blue lips
• Severe couch or wheezing that returns within or few hours after treatment with the child’s reliever medication
• Inability to speak in full sentence
• Sleepiness
• Fainting

Asthma Treatment Plans