hi snowyjoe, sorry to hear it took so long to diagnose and treat your daughter . as this is a fairly new thing for my 5yr old, im a bit hesitant to call it asthma. my other daughter who is 2 since may  started having problems when she was around 9mths when she got  bronchiolitis and was given  an atrovent inhaler. she went on to have 3 more bouts of bronchiolitis within 6mths and so it was decided to put her on beclazone and ventolin. she has been on these ever since, but i find unless she has a cold/infection then you would never know she has asthma, as she has no wheeze and rarely coughs between illness times. whereas my 5yr old has no cold  just this cough. 

As a teacher I would say yes inform the school and make sure her inhalers are there - explain to the schoo, what you have explained here.  If it is asthma you would not want her to have an attack without the school either being aware or unable to do anything about it.

hi i kept on taking my daughter to the drs for a persistant cought at night time and 1st thing in the ,morning she used to cry with it which made it worse drs said "no no theres nothing wrong just a tickly cought that wont go away " and then it started happening during the day when she was out playing etc i took her EVERY WEEK for 18months theres nothing wrong she is fine and i had asked about asthma no deffo not then we went out side one day to find her lying on the floor blue in the face gasping for breath luckily the drs was out my front door and across the road much faster than ringing 999 so i picked her up and i swear i have never in my life run that fast took her in they gave her 4 puff of a blue inhaler and told me she had asthma WEY NO u dont say i said they presribed her 1 brown and 1 blue 2 of each in the morning and 2 of each at night and the blue 1 as she needed it during the day she was nearly 2 when that hapened she is now nearly 5 and she carries it every where with her and can do it herself no problem

I dont know about it being common knowledge for kids with asthma to not particularly need a wheeze but I know when my daughter coughs alot she isnt particularly struggling as much as when she wheezes, when she coughs, she quite often brings up alot of phlegm, so that coughing is actually doing her some good, it is when there is no coughig and just a horrible wheeze that is the worst she struggles to do anything physically and actually complains of tiredness which is a rarity for my dd so it must be bad then.

My son (6) also has asthma which presented as a cough not a wheeze, the dr told me that it is usual for young children to present in this way. Wish I had known that earlier, could have avoided feeding him cough medicine unnecessarily. He is on the brown one twice daily and the blue one when required. I got my dr to prescribe an extra blue inhaler which lives at school incase of problems.

Is it common knowledge that childhood asthma has no wheeze? I must have missed a memo. My ds's was really only picked up by chance when a nrse saw him for something else but routinely listened to his chest.

The advice I recieved was to wash all bedding at atleast 60c, and any cuddly toys, or freeze them and give them a good brushing, but his asthma improved most notably when we moved out of our shabby old house!

Yeah I know not all asthma sufferers have a wheeze, i was just throwing in a possibility as if the inhalers werent being effective then maybe because it wasnt asthma.  i would certainly though give blue inhalers as and hwen required within reason as long as it isnt overdosing!

forgot to say not all asthma sufferers have a wheeze. dr said that a lot of breathing problems are labelled as asthma nowadays and a cough for no other reason in an otherwise healthy child is more likely to be a symptom of asthma.

if it is worse at night time, maybe strip the beds, and give them a good hoover, and wash the bedding in a different detergent, she may well be reacting to something, they can develop these reactions at any time, so may have been ok before but not now.

hi, no she has no wheeze but neither does my other daughter who is 2 and was diagnosed with asthma in feb 07 after 3 bad bronchiolitis infections.  i do find that she does get relief from blue inhaler but could do with it a few more times while she is coughing during day or night. my younger daughter does get relief from hers when she has a bad cough. we have tried honey and lemon mixtures, cough bottles but non have worked so that is why inhalers were given. she is very active though and its not really bothering her except when she has coughing fits at night and then it causes her to cry and get upset which leads to more coughing! i do feel that the inhalers change the sound of her cough and do soften it for a while. as for diagnosing asthma, thats i suppose when time will tell with inhaler use.

is she wheezy with the cough?  The only reason I ask is as a baby my dd was treated for asthma because she coughed, however she never had a wheeze and the inhalers did nothing to settle the cough. 

Currently she does have a wheeze and the inhalers do work wonders for that.  I am now convinced it was not asthma as a baby just a persistent cough.

Have you tried a linctus medicine, our gp always advises to use one of these as it also acts as a decongestant.

hi my daughter is almost 6 and has had a cough for couple mths so dr put her on inhalers last fri. she is on a brown and blue one. dr is treating it as asthma to see if it will improve her cough. she has an awful cough at moment but as she has no other symptoms like a cold or chest inf, then its treated as asthma symptoms. should i inform the school of her inhaler use or is it too soon as she may not use inhalers for long??