How Parents Can Help An Asthmatic Child

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30235, 13 September 1963, Page 2

How Parents Can Help An Asthmatic Child

Any mother who has seen her child go through a cruel spasm of asthma will welcome a book entitled “Asthma And Your Child,” to be published by Pegasus Press later this month. The author is Mrs Bernice Thompson, of Christchurch, who writes from a wide clinical experience as a thoracic physiotherapist and as the mother of a son who was asthmatic as a small child.

The book is designed to show parents how to help a “chesty” child improve its respiration—and its whole physical set-up—-by the intelligent use of breathing exercises. Presented as action songs, stories and games, the exercises will appeal to a child as fun to perform.

The author begins by ex-* plaining the mechanics of respiration and bronchial conditions, using simple diagrams by Robert Brett to illustrate the text She answers common questions, such as should a ‘•chesty” child be allowed to swim? Should he sleep with open windows? Frustration In a diapter to physiotherapists she says: ‘‘Many of you must be faced with the difficulty of capturing the interest of small patients suffering from asthrrw, bronchitis ar bronchiectasis. It was the result of such frustration that I wrote this book.” With the aid of this book, recommended by Sir Douglas Robb, the well-known Auckland thoracic surgeon,*

parents will find the satisfaction of helping their children through an attack instead of standing by helplessly. And they will be able to share with other parents and physiotherapists, the gratification of watching pale, listless children become healthy and active as a result of the imaginative puffing and blowing exercises. Adults Also The exercises have, in fact, been so successful with children that Mrs Thompson has used them also in the treatment of adults. Mrs Thompson, who is the wife of a Christchurch thoracic surgeon, has had a wide overseas experience as a physiotherapist. With her husband she joined the China Convoy of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in 1945. After

a years service in North Honan, treating battle casualties under difficult conditions, she was seconded to the Institute of Hospital Technology in Hankow. Here she started a school of physiotherapy manual which was translated into Chinese. In 1948 Mr and Mrs Thompson went to Britain where they both specialised in thoracic work. With their family of four, they now live at Cashmere. ■