Cough and cold medicines

One of our more common questions we here is what cough or cold medicines to give kids when they are sick. These medications have come under increasing scrutiny lately for a number of different reasons.

We recently changed our recommendations for the use in very young children based on recent information from the FDA regarding serious rare side effects occurring to young children. More information from WebMD. With this and the fact that these medications rarely have any benefit for young children in reducing symptoms of a cold we are *no longer recommending their use for any child under age two*. This does not apply to pain/fever medications such as Tylenol© or ibuprofen which we feel are effective medications for pain or fever in children of all ages. Check out "pain medication dosing page":/health-information/medications/tylenol-and-ibuprofen/ for more information..