• Posted September 11, 2025

How To Help Your Back-To-School Kid With Their Allergies

THURSDAY, Sept. 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Back-to-school is an exciting time for kids and parents, but it also marks the beginning of fall allergies as well as the cold and flu season.

So on top of gathering clothes and books and school supplies, parents also might have to figure out why their child has a runny nose.

“It is very confusing because you're like, what's happening?” Dr. Farah Kahn, a spokesperson for the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, told HealthDay TV.  “Do I reach for an oral antihistamine like cetirizine or loratadine? Or is this viral crud that my kid has picked up from daycare or school?”

But there are some solid clues to suss out what’s ailing your kid, and many good ways to help them through their sniffles, she said.

First: Check their temperature.

“If there's a low-grade temperature or any fevers, it's probably not seasonal and environmental allergies,” said Khan, an allergist with Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “They don't cause fevers generally.”

If over-the-counter antihistamines don’t work, that’s another clue that some sort of bug is causing your kid’s symptoms, Khan said.

“If it's not working, it's probably not environmental allergies,” she said. “If it's a runny nose from a viral illness, the antihistamines aren't going to do anything.”

Parents of children with allergies also might notice that symptoms appear in a regular pattern, year after year.

“So it’s, ‘You know, last year we had the same issues as we were cooling back down’ or ‘You know what, last spring we had the same thing with lots of itching and sneezing and congestion,’ ” Khan said. “Viral illnesses really tend to be a little bit more limited and they can sort of pop up whenever.”

The best way to make sure is to see a doctor or allergist, she said.

“I'm biased, but I'm going to say come talk to an allergist because sometimes just identifying the triggers can help you figure out what am I dealing with and how am I going to approach this,” Khan said.

Many times seasonal allergies can be managed by simple day-to-day steps, Khan said, providing ragweed pollen allergies as an example.

“Ragweed is very high in the fall as we're going back into in the school year,” Khan said. “There some simple avoidance measures that I can put into place that don't even have anything to do with medicines, like showering after I'm done being outside or keeping the windows closed at home or when I'm driving around.”

Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

“Just those small things sometimes can limit the amount of pollen burden that you're seeing to help minimize and reduce symptoms,” Khan said.

Another simple measure to treat seasonal allergies is “just some good old nasal saline,” she said.

Either a small nasal spray for younger children or a sinus wash for older kids and teens can “get all that mucus out,” Khan said. “Otherwise, it just sits in their nose.”

If those steps aren’t enough, parents can consult a doctor or allergist about nasal steroids or antihistamines that would be most effective, she said.

Some parents also might be dealing with food allergies in their children, but Khan recommends seeing an allergist rather than using an off-the-shelf food sensitivity test that can cost hundreds of dollars.

“They don't really give you the information that their marketing suggests or claims,” Khan said. “I've never ordered them and I never recommend them.”

More information

The American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology has more on childhood allergies.

SOURCE: Dr. Farah Kahn, HealthDay TV, Sept. 10, 2025