Can anyone tell me how to properly use a brown preventer inhaler with a spacer for a 7year old?

[Nochristmasbreak]

My son was diagnosed with asthma in October and given a blue inhaler to use if he needed it.

He got really wheezy and struggled to breath recently so the GP gave us a prescription for a brown one to use morning and night.

But we haven't been given instructions/guidance on how to use it.

So he has to have two puffs, but how far apart? Does he have to hold his breath? How long between each puff? Can he breath in and out between the puffs?

I have googled til I'm blue in the face and there is guidance for adults, videos from Australia, videos from Finland, some without spacers, some with different spacers. But not a clear video or instructions on what a 7 year old should be doing.

He doesn't has an asthma review until February yet we are doing this twice a day. Only in my recent googling we discovered he has to tilt his chin up so we could have been doing this wrong the whole time!

Can anyone help?

My 5 year old uses a preventer inhaler twice a day. Think we have an aero chamber, although I remember having a volumatic one as a child. We do 2 puffs. So hold to his face. And like previous posters - one puff and count to 10. Either he counts or I count and he’s supposed to breathe normally. And then repeat.

This is all really helpful. Thank you to everyone that posted advice and links. I will be saving this to refer back to and to show DH.

Am glad you’re now feeling confident about it all @Nochristmasbreak. I hope that your DS feels better soon, too - hopefully it’ll be that he’s just had a rough winter-related patch & he’ll be able to come off the inhaled steroid. Whether or not he can, although I know it’s a PITA getting appointments atm, if he doesn’t have an Asthma Action Plan, either his GP or the practice nurse should create one for him for you to then share with his school &, when such things can happen again, any clubs/groups he might belong to.

If you’ve the time at all it’d be worth contacting Asthma UK to tell them you didn’t find the website helpful & why. It’s not much use them creating resources if people are struggling to access them. They’re quite good at responding to feedback...