Breathing Easy: A Parent's Guide to Childhood Asthma, Inhalers, and Raising a Confident Child

Most parents believe the same thing about asthma. It is wrong in a way that matters.

The belief is that asthma is a breathing problem that comes and goes. That when your child is wheezing they have asthma, and when they are running about happily they do not. That the blue inhaler fixes it, and the rest of the time there is nothing to think about.

Asthma is not a breathing problem. It is inflammation — and it is there on the good days too.

Written by a consultant paediatrician and neonatologist, this book replaces the model most families are working from, and then builds everything else on it.

What's Inside

• Why international guidance now says asthma should not be treated with a reliever inhaler alone
• The canister count: a number you can work out at home tonight that tells you whether your child's asthma is genuinely controlled
• The inhaler technique that decides whether any of the treatment works
• Why the written action plan matters more than anything else you are handed
• Exactly what to do during an attack, and the point at which you stop treating and call
• Which triggers are worth fighting, and which are costing you money for nothing
• How to teach a child to describe their own breathing
• The overprotection trap, and why restricting a child's life buys no safety
• Adolescence: the highest-risk years, and how to hand over safely

Grounded in current guidance from the Global Initiative for Asthma and the peer-reviewed literature.