It was seeing how quickly my own daughter responded to homeopathic treatment for a cough and a sore throat which first aroused my interest in homeopathy. My seven year old (as she was then) had been coughing for a few days, a tickly kind of cough. It was made worse because she was rehearsing for the Christmas carol concert which wsa going to be recorded that year. She had gone home for tea with a friend, Adam. Adam’s Mum, Felicity, is a homeopath. When I came to collect her, Felicity asked if she could give me some medicine for her. It was her observations about Ellen which struck me. She said she noticed Ellen had been a lot worse when she went into the warm house and that she’d been holding her chest because it was painful. She asked if Ellen’s colds usually ended in a cough. I confirmed that they did. She gave me a few doses of the homeopathic remedy, Phosphorus and advised me to keep her warm. That night she slept through, her cough didn’t wake her as it had the previous nights. The next day she went to school much refreshed and barely coughing.

I started to read around the subject and was interested to find that there’s a Phosphorous type or “constitution” as it’s often referred to, which Ellen seemed to match very well. The homeopathic literature explains this constitutional picture as what makes the child tick and what upsets them and where, why and how they’re likely to fall ill. This all seemed good information any parent would want to have about their child. But best of all it worked! As she’s grown older, my daughter has needed other remedies as she’s faced other challenges but her subsequent remedies have been related to that first prescription.

When most children fall ill, they tend to produce strong symptoms which make homeopathic prescribing relatively easy. This is because children are basically pretty vital and their bodies react swiftly to problems. They also tend to have used fewer conventional medicines and obviously by dint of being young, have been exposed to fewer stresses than adults. It is often when a problem is not being resolved by conventional means, repeated prescriptions of topical corticosteroids aren’t clearing the skin problem or repeated prescriptions of antibiotics don’t stop their ear infections, that a parent will bring a child for a consultation with me.

The approach is still the same. The clues which point to the best homeopathic prescription are gleaned from the state the child is in when ill, e.g. tearful, clingy, fussy. I need to know in detail about the physical complaint the child is suffering from. For example, with a condition such as eczema, I’ll need to know when it started, what it looks like and where on the body it is. It’s helpful to understand what makes the condition better or worse and if anyone else in the family suffers from it. I also need to know about any other medical problems. Lastly, I’ll need to know a bit about how the child is generally. For example, some children are always thirsty whilst others don’t drink unless prompted. Some love being outdoors even on the coldest of days; others crave warmth and the slightest draft can upset them. All these factors are considered when prescribing the individual prescription for a child’s eczema.