"We all fear what we don't know, it's natural" – Leo Buscaglia

Most of us feel much more comfortable to be immersed in an environment where we are knowledgeable or familiar with. We often feel a little nervous when moving into a new place because we don't know what things will happen to us; especially if it's something unfortunate, we wouldn't know who and where to seek help from. Children, like us, are also afraid of things they are unfamiliar with.

Even though nasal irrigation with warm saline water helps to alleviate many nasal related symptoms, most people and especially children freak out when they first informed to let the saline water enter through their nostril. They think of the horrible experience they had of choking in a swimming lesson and refuse to give nasal irrigation a try.

Every month in our clinics we have over a hundred patients who are less than seven years old performing nasal irrigation, and over 90% of these children are able to adapt. We have cumulated lots of experience throughout the past decade and here we will share our knowledge on the steps we take to help children adapt to nasal irrigation using Sanvic's Nasal Irrigator Tip for Children:

1. Let the children know nasal irrigation is comfortable and enjoyable: From a psychology point of view, most people are more acceptable to something enjoyable rather than something painful. Try to avoid overly stressing the benefit of nasal irrigation at the beginning, or to threaten the child in choosing either nasal irrigation or medicine and surgery. Instead of pushing the child in doing nasal irrigation, let them to want to do it. The best way to start is to let the child monitor someone else doing nasal irrigation, so that the child can know what's going on, and see that the person is not suffering from nasal irrigation. After the child sees this for a few times, they will fear less and be more willing to give nasal irrigation a try. Therefore, I suggest all parents to try nasal irrigation yourself first, and once you are familiar with it then demonstrate nasal irrigation in front of your child.
2. Start with small amount of saline water and lots of encouragement: When you demonstrate nasal irrigation, let your child feel the water pulse by rinsing his palm with the spout from nasal irrigator. Let your child know that the warm saline water spout is comfortable. When the child agrees to try, make sure you test the spout temperature first before placing the irrigator tip to your child's nostril. Often the very first water spout is cold and that can be irritating for the nasal cavity.
   Once you made sure the water coming out is warm, pause the irrigator and place the irrigator tip to your child's nostril. Have the child bend his head, open his mouth and ask the child to hold his breath. Now resume the water flow, count 3 seconds and pause the flow again. Let the child take a break and kindly ask him how he felt; if he finds the experience interesting or comfortable.
   A lot of patient is needed at this early stage, and don't expect the child to be able to finish one full nasal irrigation in just 1 or 2 days. This stage is only to get the child to familiarize with the process of nasal irrigation.
3. Gradually increase the amount and time of nasal irrigation: Parents can gradually increase the duration of each irrigation time (ie. 3 seconds to 5 seconds, then to 10 seconds) as the child becomes more familiar with the process. We also recommend you to count out every second so the child knows where he's at, and can also help motivate him to challenge a longer duration. From our experience about 50% of the children will be comfortable with doing nasal irrigation after one week of daily trial. When the child is able to nasal irrigate half container of warm saline water without a break, the child is now ready to switch to the Nasal Irrigator Tip for Adults.
4. Switching to Nasal Irrigator Tip for Adults: After the child is very familiar with nasal irrigation using Sanvic's Nasal Irrigator Tip for Children, you can now encourage your child to switch to an Adult Tip for better nasal irrigation result. Before switching to an Adult Tip, first try to let your child nasal irrigate with the highest frequency setting using the Child Tip, you should now be able to observe a small amount of warm saline water flowing out of your child's other nostril, which is similar to using an Adult Tip. The increase of water frequency should be a gradual change. Continue using Child Tip with the highest frequency setting for about a week will allow your child to become familiar with the feeling of having the warm saline water flowing from one nostril to the other.

During nasal irrigation it is important to pay attention to the breathing as it should be either paused or solely from the mouth, the water temperature, and the head bend position.