Should You Give Your Child Cough Medicine?

Cough medicine might seem like the obvious answer when your child is feeling ill, but there are some good reasons to avoid heading to the pharmacy when your child is coughing.

Cough Medicine Isn’t Effective

The main reason to avoid giving your child cough medicine is that there is no evidence that it can actually help. You may just be wasting your time trying to get your child to take the medication when he or she is already feeling under the weather. Studies have shown that these medicines are no better than a placebo at treating coughs.

The same is true of cough drops or lozenges. Sucking on a hard sweet can be just as effective as taking a lozenge that contains active ingredients. A sweet could help to soothe your child’s throat when he or she has a cough, but remember not to offer hard sweets to children under 5 as there is a risk of choking. Using lozenges can also cause coughs to last longer. Cough drops that contain menthol have been linked to coughs that don’t go away after the infection has gone. These persistent coughs often disappear quickly once the patients stop using the cough drops.