Blow your nose

#blow nose#tissue#cold#nose

Blowing your nose is harder than it looks. Many children sniff in instead of blowing out. The visual support below shows the movement one step at a time and reminds your child that the tissue goes in the bin and hands get washed afterwards.

A girl with curly hair blows her nose into a tissue.

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Blow nose

A girl with curly hair blows her nose into a tissue.

About this visual support

Most adults cannot remember learning to blow their nose, which makes it easy to forget how abstract it is. Your child has to push air out through the nose, not the mouth, while holding one nostril closed. It is not a movement you can watch someone else do, because everything happens inside the nose. Many children sniff instead, or blow out through the mouth and look surprised when nothing happens.

That is why pictures work well here. A card showing a child holding a tissue to the nose shows the position itself, and the next card can show the bin and the sink. It helps to practise when your child does not have a cold, for example by blowing a feather or a cotton ball across the table using only the nose. Once the movement is there, it gets much easier to use it when the nose really is blocked.

Keep tissues within reach in a few places around the home, and put the picture card next to the box. That way your child does not have to come and ask every time, and the habit of throwing the tissue away straight after comes along with it. In the Routined app you can add nose blowing as a step in the morning or evening routine during cold weeks. You can try the app for 14 days without paying.