Hi there my son has a a dry cough now for 4 weeks, ive seen the doctor 3 times now and they say hes chest is clear, last time he went was last weekend.. Ive tried everything, medised, tixylix , steam. vick vapour rub. I dont know what else to do, he not had a cold at all since this cough . I dont know what else to do should i take him back to doctors , i think there getting fed up with us though..Any advice will be great. Thanks cora xxxxxxxx Forgot to say hes 2 years old

Don't know if it helps but my mum always made a sirup using onion. Very easy, just cut some onion, put it in a bowl and cover it with sugar. Leave it for a few hours or till you see the juice. One tablespoon maybe a few times a day. Hopefully it will help. I know how exhausting it must be for you both. You have my sympathy. Good luck!

My daughter has this, I really sympathise. Spoonfuls of honey work,a s do glycerine pastilles from Boots (suitable for under threes), though I think they may have stopped doing them (

With my daughter, it does become a habit so we ask her to concentrate on not coughing, by sipping water etc. This works but she is older, nearly four.

My son had this last summer - in the end I took him to the doctor when he started getting quite breathless, especially when running around. They suspected mild asthma and gave him ventolin which cleared up his cough within a week. Since then we've needed the ventolin a few times - whenever he gets a cold really. If I don't use it he ends up with the persistent cough again. Hope this helps.

I was going to suggest asthma as well. A persistent cough can be a symptom particularly in children. It's worth asking about.

DD2 gets this (and has done intermittantly since she was little, she's now 4) but we have just made a rather amazing discovery .... which may or may not apply to you, so bear with me!

Yesterday DH came home from work and said he felt like there was something was on the back of his tongue and that it was making him feel like gagging/coughing. I got a torch out and it turns out that his uvula (dangly thing at back of throat, between his tonsils) has elongated and is dangling on to his tongue <wow and yuck emoticon>.

The point being that then we got the torch out and went and had a look in DD2's mouth and ... guess what ... same thing! We Googled it and mainly got American websites but one of the things you can do is to give the person Ibruprofen. We did that and whether that helped or whether the elongated uvular stage was coming to it's natural end of not, I don't know, but 3 or 4 days after coughing approximately every minute and the thing has reduced back to it's normal size and she's stopped coughing (thank God).

So, check out your DS's mouth - just on the remote off-chance that this is what's happening to him too.

In any case, good luck, I hope it stops soon ... as well as it not being great for your child, persistent coughs are a bit like some kind of torture to listen to, aren't they?!

Have you thought it could be a form of hayfever? Note times of day and pollen count. Is it worse some times than others? Its just that the pollen levels have, I think, been quite high this year and my DS gets a cough when the levels are high. I give him a simple linctus and a weak juice for by his bed. The doctors and pharmacists say thats all I can give.

my dd (7 months)also has a dry cough at the mo, it only seems to bother her at night. I also have a problem occasionally with a dry cough and have to use an ioniser in my bedroom , this does help me. Im in the process of buying one for dd's room.

See a homoeopath. Homoeopathy is amazingly good for all kinds of conditions, especially for children. Great thing is it is not only very effective, but perfectly safe - no side effects. Try The Alliance of Registered Homoeopaths, who have website with a list of qualified practitioners. My sister is a homeopath and she treats all of us. We hardly ever need to see the GP about anything. Don't know what I would do without it.