How do you teach them to blow their nose?

My boys are 18 1/2 mos old & HATE having drippy noses. They're constantly coming to us asking to get their noses wiped, but I can't figure out how to teach them to BLOW their nose into the tissue. Are they too young? Or do you have any pointers on how to get the idea across to them? We've shown them us doing it, we've demonstrated blowing out our noses without a tissue so they can see it, etc. I'm so sick of snot! Thankfully, we can leave Kleenex out & they wipe their own noses, but they go through SOOOO many Kleenexes that I can't actually leave them out!

SO, any tips?

 

When you figure it out tell me please. My 6 year old still won't blow his nose.

 

Ditto. DS is 5 and still can't figure it out!

 

I wish I knew, but if it helps, my girls are 3 and still can't do it. Every once in a while they seem to do it by accident, but for the most part, when they're trying to blow out, they sniff in instead.

And that's with me holding the Kleenex. If they hold it themselves, all they do is wipe a smear of snot from ear to ear.

FWIW, what works best for me is to pinch their nose with the Kleenex and then sort of squeeze it from top to bottom (as if you were trying to get the last little bit out of a tube of toothpaste). Sometimes that gets out the snot that's still in the nose as well as the snot that's dripping.

 

My boys both just one day started to do it... but that only started recently when they were mimicking my DP when she was sick (they were not). They will blow their nose any chance they get, whether or not they have any snot. They just think it is THE coolest thing!! I wish I had better advice.

 

Oh, can someone please tell us!!! I have a 4 year old that blows air out of her mouth :lol:

 

Our (wonderful) babysitter taught the girls to blow their noses when they were still less than 10 months old. She comes from this huge middle eastern family, has lots of children herself and I guess just has so much experience.

She got them to play this game she called 'shanufa' where she exaggeratedly blows air in and out of her nose and gets them to copy her (clearly one to try before the kids get a runny nose). They practice/play this several times. Then, when they do get a cold she holds a tissue up to their nose and asks them to 'do shanufa'. Any snot that comes out on the tissue gets a lot of praise and very quickly they catch on to what blowing their nose is about. It's been so wonderful that I forgot until this post that not all children do it. Occasionally when they haven't had a cold for a long while, I have to remind them to 'blow with your nose' as otherwise Maia will blow air out of her mouth.

The other thing I read, which we never tried, was to teach them to blow out candles. Then teach them to blow out candles with their nose. Then to ask them to blow this way into a tissue when they have a cold.

But shanufa is such a wonderful word that we just had to do it the babysitter's way.

 

Those are great ways above.

To get them to 'get' the blowing out their nose. The sound you can make with your mouth closed is hmmmmmmm then start the above!