Undoubtedly, over the course of your child’s life, you’ve had to run for over-the-counter (OTC) medication to help with common ailments ranging from severe fever to mild coughing. But are the medicines you can readily purchase in the grocery store good for your kids in the long run? Rumors have circulated that you can actually harm your kids using these medications, but the truth is that these problems lie mostly in the administered amount to the children rather than the medicine themselves. What is assumed to be a problem with the medicine, is really a matter of over-dosing.
Whenever you deliver medicine to a child, you should be sure to check the labels regarding the proper dosage. There actually are no “safe” medicines which can be taken in any quantity. Even the most popular and widely consumed OTC medication, acetaminophen, is dangerous when administered to a child in the improper dosage. When administering prescription meds, the consumer tends to take the instructions more seriously, as they understand that there is a danger associated with using the medicine incorrectly. This makes OTC medicines more likely to be accidentally overdosed due to the lack of trepidation people experience when handling them.
Another reason for the typical misuse of children’s OTC medicine is simply because the labels are not read correctly or not read at all. Parents that mistakenly deliver an adult dosage of a normally “safe” medicine, are doing much more harm than good. So when giving medicine to your child, be absolutely sure you are following the instructions carefully for both individual dosage and daily amounts. And be sure to avoid practices like giving the child enough medicine to “last through the day.” Also, if your child has a pre-existing health complication, check with your doctor before giving your child any OTC medicine.
