Your Kid’s Health Needs Herbal Happiness

2021-12-22 10:12:54

For many of us, the awe of a new life to look for safe, natural, inexpensive means of nurture has become a must but what about this healthy herbal supplementation to your kid’s health.

Since ancient medic times, herbalists are who we are and how our families work, healing practiced around the kitchen table around the world and across the centuries. Thank the Good Green Earth that home herbal-ism happens as a reflex, intuition built on a foundation of herbal fluency that allows us to live healthy in every moment.

Many herbal references either start with adulthood implications, glossing over the unique needs of the mature crowd entirely. This ignores the incredible spiritual and transformation power of little lives, both in their daily personal growth and change, and in their powerful role within a family and community. Children this age often need our support as they explore the world and how their body relates to it, engage with other beings, and discover their own perceptions.

Choices of Herbs: A selective must!

In any given moment of using herbs, we must consider a good choice in advance. What herbs are useful for a dry, hacking cough, or a stuck, wet cough, or a cough with back pain or a sinus headache or postnasal drip? Of the many herbs for cough, which is the perfect herb or combination for this unique cough?

When we work with toddlers and young children, there are extra considerations, given that they are fierce but tiny, and in a more-or-less constant state of anabolism and mental and physical development.

The first question to consider when choosing an herb or creating a formula for the daycare and preschool set is this:

Is this herb traditionally used in young children?

It may sound obvious, but we live in a culture where the new thing is often confused with the best thing. It can be easy to forget amid the chaos of the next incredible panacea from across the globe featured in glossy magazines and the nightly news, but we do not want to be experimenting on our little ones, we want to reach for the right herb the first time.

When searching for the right herb for a child, the best place to look is tradition: what have people always used for this issue in a person this age? What did our ancestors use, in our current region or elsewhere? What do the native people in our area traditionally use? In using traditional remedies we turn to thousands of years of healing tradition for guidance, and stand together with those who came before in practicing the healing arts. There is power, honor, and love in upholding good traditions. There is also safety: allow those who have come before to teach you their accomplishments, instead of reinventing the wheel at your kitchen table.

The second question to consider for herb choice is: How welcoming is this herb?

Some herbs are so safe to consume that they’re food ingredients or spices, like burdock, nettles, peppermint, and fennel. Other herbs are not food but still extremely benign, like catnip, lavender, and anise-hyssop. Then there are herbs that are benign but definitively medicinal, like skullcap, passionflower, and bee balm. Beyond that there is a whole range of herbs, up to dose-dependent medicines that make you sick (or worse) in doses beyond a few drops of tincture. 

I think of this as how welcoming an herb is, as to a disorderly houseguest: peppermint and burdock will let me stumble around in muddy boots and leave dishes in the sink without reprimand, but the lovely lobelia demands a hostess gift and a deep bow to get through the door.

 For young children, the best herbs are food herbs, herbs that are not food. These herbs tend to be very safe and gentle.

The third question to consider for herb choice is: Is this the gentlest herb you can think of?

Young children tend to be very sensitive: to medicines, to genetics, to spiritual awareness, to interpersonal dynamics, unhealthy relationships, unspoken nuance, and the vast mysteries of the universe. We always start with a small amount of the gentlest herbs we can find in the hopes of bolstering their innate vitality and helping maintain balance in their little bodies, not overbalancing them or spinning them way out on an energetic limb.

The last question to consider for herb choice is:

How safe is this herb?

Part of critical thinking is a formal check-back: you think you have your herb, now check back intentionally to be sure that you couldn’t possibly harm anyone. What other actions does the herb have? Are there any known contraindications? If the child in questions is on pharmaceuticals, extreme caution is required to avoid any potential interactions; depending on the situation, a professional clinical herbalist with pediatric experience may be your best bet for medically fragile children. Avoid dose dependent herbs, and anything potentially dangerous or toxic.

Formula Construction: Stay Centered

Often, toddlers and young children do very well when given a simple (just one herb). Since they’re so sensitive to both nuance and intervention, we can often do a lot with a very small dose of the one right herb delivered in just the right way.

That said, sometimes they benefit from formulas. In these cases, it is essential to remember that this age group is both very receptive and in a constant state of growth and change, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Balance:

Balance is at the heart of all schools of holistic medicine. It is a focus on nurturing our existing strengths and restoring areas that have eroded. We use herbs to maintain balance, or to return a system to balance when things get wonky, without overcompensating in the other direction.

Toddlers and young children are more sensitive and receptive than older children, teens, and adults, so it is extremely important to keep the principle of balance at the center of your mind when formulating for this age group. Choose gentle herbs with balanced or gentle energetics, and formulate with balance as a central focus.

Synergy:

The principle of synergy states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is pivotal in formulation, when we combine plants and ask them to work together for greater healing. For toddlers and young children, looking at traditional formulas for enlightenment as to ideal combinations is a good place to start. Trust your intuition about which herbs seem to magnify each other: hawthorn and rose, hyssop and bee balm, witch hazel and marshmallow—which combinations do you find the most powerful?

Remember that synergy can be enhanced by the route of administration, so consider how you will deliver your remedy. Will this be most powerful as a syrup, the soothing slide of honey accentuating the magic of elecampane? Or maybe a steam, taking advantage of thyme’s volatile oils as they evaporate into the ether? Not all things must be tea.

Electuaries

Electuaries are herbs that make a formula taste good, such as lavender, rose, licorice, elderberry, peppermint, etc. They drastically increase the efficacy of formulas for toddlers and young children, as demon-possessed orangutans thankfully haven’t lost their sweet tooth (and if your child is perfectly well-behaved when they don’t feel good, just keep that to yourself, thank you). Obviously, if the remedy tastes good, they’re more likely to take it.

 Consider synergy: what flavors enhance each other? Is that a sign that perhaps the herbs are boosting each other in other ways too?

A sweet taste is very appropriate for young children, as it appeals to their active anabolic nature, providing grounding nourishment to send medicine deep, along with a replenishing energy boost. They crave it for a reason, after all; all that growth and change requires a lot of input, and the brain lives on glucose.

Energetic Science

Young children’s energetic sciences are noticeably different from their older counterparts. They are more delicate and sensitive as a baseline. How they manifest illness and imbalance varies by the individual of course, but the incredible anabolism and transformation of this age tends itself toward a balanced state that is more toward the warm and moist part of the circle, with plenty of movement and little stagnation or constriction (we grow into that, lucky things).

 And Finally…

Pinpointing which herb is the most appropriate in a given situation is one of the main hurdles we must leap as we develop our skills as home herbalists. These decisions are especially fraught when we’re working with limited supplies, limited experience, and a furious toddler, perhaps on limited sleep. As you tailor your home apothecary to your family’s unique needs, I hope these tips are helpful for choosing appropriate herbs.