Colds, fevers, coughs and other illnesses are common in children’s growth and development, and parents often keep some common medicines at home for their children. What do parents need to pay attention to when administering medication? How to use the medicine to be more effective? Fever-reducing drugs: not suitable for children within 6 months Fever-reducing drugs are essential medicines in every family’s small medicine cabinet. Fever is just a symptom and can be caused by many diseases. According to the recommendation of the World Health Organization, the use of antipyretics is necessary only when the body temperature is higher than 38.5°C. When it is lower than this temperature, parents are advised to carry out physical cooling. There are two main types of antipyretics commonly used in children today: ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Parents should pay attention to the safe dosage when giving fever-reducing drugs to their children, and in general, do not use them for more than 3 consecutive days. In addition, it takes time for the drug to work, and it is best to repeat the use of antipyretic drugs more than 4 hours apart. If your child takes fever-reducing medication for 3 days in a row and still does not improve significantly, you need to go to the hospital. Doctors remind that infants within 6 months of fever should not use antipyretic drugs to cool them down, but rather physical cooling, such as loosening the wrap, taking a warm bath, and applying antipyretic patches, which can quickly cool the child down. The actual anti-inflammatory drugs: to use the whole course of treatment The child has inflammation, usually parents will say, eat anti-inflammatory drugs, this anti-inflammatory drugs usually refers to antibiotics. Antibiotics are suitable for inflammation caused by bacteria, but they are not effective for inflammation caused by viruses. Antibiotics have many side effects and many parents are afraid to give them to their children, but in fact, it is good medicine when used at the right time. So when should you give your child antibiotics? Parents first need to judge their child’s condition, usually in the acute phase of illness need to use the drug, if it has entered the recovery period, has not yet begun to use antibiotics, it is no longer necessary. The key judgment point in the acute phase is whether the child is uncomfortable, for example, if the fever has gone down and the child is back to a lively state, it is not uncomfortable. If the child is in good spirits, parents can observe the child at home for 24 hours to 3 days, and then go to the hospital for the doctor to help determine if antibiotics are needed. If it is not a bacterial infection, or if the bacterial infection has reached a recovery stage, antibiotics can be ignored. In addition, once the antibiotics are used they should be used for the entire course of treatment, usually 5 to 7 days, and parents should not see that their child is getting better and then stop using them. If some bacteria remain, it will develop resistance to the antibiotic, and if the antibiotic is not used completely every time, it will eventually turn into a superbug, and then there will be no medicine to deal with it. The cough medicine: cough expectorant should not be taken together About cough medicine, many parents tend to think that it is all the same. But doctors remind us that cough medicine is clearly divided into two categories, one for cough suppressants (also called cough suppressants) and one for expectorants. Different drugs are used for different symptoms, and the two types of drugs should not be taken together. The function of expectorants is to dilute or liquefy the secretions in the body that cause congestion, such as phlegm, while the function of cough suppressants is to stop the body’s reflex or desire to cough. Using expectorants and cough suppressants together can cause the phlegm to become blocked in the respiratory tract, allowing a large number of pathogens within the phlegm to multiply, which can lead to a delay in getting the infection under control. However, in some cases, such as severe coughing, especially violent coughing without phlegm, which affects rest and sleep and even aggravates the condition or causes other complications, it is necessary to take a small amount of cough suppressants while treating the cause. In addition, there are also some Chinese medicines that have both cough suppressant and expectorant properties, such as loquat dew and hemp dew, which have a more moderate cough suppressant effect and at the same time have a phlegm-relieving effect and can be used according to the condition.