How to Teach a Child to Blow Their Nose
There are so many small life skills that we adults have learned over the years. How to put on a jacket. How to tie your shoes. How to inflate chewing gum and snap your fingers. (Okay, these last two may not be “life skills,” but they are important nonetheless.) And yet they are quite difficult to teach.
“Let’s see, to whistle, you just purse your lips like this and, I don’t know, exhale air through the hole … no, slow down … purse your lips a little more, maybe … uh, at some point you you will understand it, ”we say.
However, one such life skill that we can’t wait to learn on their own is how to blow your nose. Because snotty noses are disgusting and we are not interested in wiping them off forever.
This tip comes from Today’s Parent, and was part of a 30 -part slideshow filled with hacking tricks associated with returning to school. But it’s actually a trick all year round: teach them with a cotton swab.
1. Introduce her to the idea of blowing air out of her nose by forcing her to move with a cotton swab, supplying only air to the nose (keeping her mouth closed).
2. She is now ready to taste the napkin. Ask her to gently pinch one nostril while she blows the other, and then switch sides.
3. Ask her to discard the tissues and wash her hands to prevent the spread of germs.
If you don’t have cotton balls on hand, you can also try placing a clean napkin on the table and asking them to practice blowing their nose to move the napkin. Damn it, make a game out of this, competing to see who can spread the fabric across the table the fastest.
Once they learn this, you can go back to teaching them how to whistle.