How do I teach my children to stay calm when they have an allergic reaction?

Question

This relates to this earlier question.

I'm looking for advice on teaching my children how to stay calm while they are having an allergic reaction, so they can properly react and remember their training on how to handle it.

My first idea is relaxation training before the time of symptoms. The goal is to avoid the stress and damaging the itching areas and worsening other symptoms. Relaxing methods contain discussion about symptoms, encouraging to describe feelings, self-care, self-love, meditation and trying to find out the reason for the symptoms. An idea is to connect the relaxation to something practical such as playing music and Tai Chi so the children has focus on other things, not on itching and other symptoms.

There are surely other methods to teach children to stay calm during allergic reactions of which they can be totally unaware of, just extremely irritated or over-active. Somehow as a parent, I find it important to make opportunities for the children to acknowledge the culprits themselves.

How do I teach my children to stay calm when they have an allergic reaction?

Answer 1

Like the comment above, the first thing we need to know is the age of the child. For example, a young child with a needle phobia is going to freak out when you use the epi pen (or similar). Those HURT. A lot. Expecting a child to be calm when you are shoving a needle in their leg (and holding it for 10-15 seconds) is not reasonable. In this case, remember that your kids will react to YOUR reaction. If you are acting stressed, or panicked, they will feel that and your reaction will feed their own stress. Share your calm.

In an older child, a lot of it will have to do with their preparation for the reaction. Have you talked about what they will do, who they will call, what order they will take meds, etc? Talk about it and role play it a lot of times when it isn't actually the allergic emergency and you will give them the model of how to respond when the emergency occurs. There is a reason we did fire drills several times a year when in elementary school: repetition in practicing what to do during an emergency makes a scary situation much easier when it actually happens.

My answer is more applicable to anaphylactic reactions where seconds matter. In cases where there is a mild allergy, I'd say if you expect it to happen or it happens frequently, have a plan with your child on what they are going to do. My 9 year old has medicine in the office at the school that he knows he can go take if he is having an allergic reaction. (I had to sign papers with the school, and had to provide the medicine, obviously.) When he takes it, the school calls me and lets me know that he has taken the medicine. But we have a plan, and he knows what it is, and is calm because he knows that within 20 min of taking his medicine, he will be feeling much better.