Chronic Cough

[linda2671]

I have a little girl in my class who has had a bad cough all year. She sounds like a seal barking. According to the mom, she has been to the doctor, and he can't find any reason for her cough. She thinks it an emotional thing and she's doing it to get attention. The cough sounds so horrible, that everytime we pass another teacher and they hear her cough, they say something sympathetic to her. I've started keeping a log, and I've found that she coughs every time we pass another adult, or another adult comes into our room. She coughs and then looks at them to see if they noticed. Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? Any ideas for solutions?

 

[iteachthird]

Hi

There was a boy in our school that barked like crazy. It was so irritating. YOu could hear him all the way down the hall. He was actually removed from the room during testing so not to disturd other kids....His parents took him to the doctors and same kind of thing...One day as the kids were being picked up this boy was barking on the playground and a father approached his mom. He is a chiropractor and he said he could fix the problem. As far as I know he did help him. He was never a student of mine and he is now in the middle school, but I think he did stop the constant coughing. I know that it would absolutely drive me crazy to hear it all day long...
Good luck

 

[City Mouse]

Wow, it definitely sounds like she is coughing just for attention. I don't really have any advice except maybe to warn other adults in the building not to say anything when she coughs. Maybe if the other adults don't comment, she will lose interest in coughing. I don't know how she manages to sound like a seal barking though. I used to get that cough when I was little, but I NEVER wanted to have it purposely. It embarrassed me to no end every time I had to cough.
Good luck, I hope you figure out the root of the problem!

 

[MrChapp]

I had a chronic cough for a while that was finally diagnosed as a symptom of allergies. I took allergy meds for it and it pretty much cleared up, but I noticed I still coughed sometimes almost as a nervous habit. And it was a full-fledged cough, too, not just a nervous throat-clearing cough. It was as if I had gotten so used to coughing all of the time, I didn't really know how to NOT cough all of the time.

 

[cvt]

Gerd

I have a boy with the exact same problem. He has had a bad cough for over 4 months. His mother claimed that he was faking it to get attention, so for the longest time she refused to take him to the doctor. I finally spoke to his grandfather who turned out to be the legal guardian. He said that he had taken his grandson to the doctor several times, and that at first the diagnosis was asthma, but that a different doctor later suspected GERD, or acid reflux disease. I had never heard of GERD, but it appears to be fairly common, and is one of the reasons for an unexplained cough. It is treated with a prescription antacid. Since taking the antacid the last two weeks, my student seems to be coughing much less.