How To Know If Your Child Has Pneumonia

Rapid Breathing

When a child is breathing faster than normal, and yet the child had not been active recently, this could be a symptom of pneumonia. In fact, there have been cases when rapid breathing was the only symptom of pneumonia that manifested in the child. The International Liaison Committee On Resuscitation (ILCOR) established that the normal respiration rate for rested children are as follows:
• Infants to <1 year old: 30 – 60 breaths per minute
• 1 – 12 years old: 18 – 40 breaths per minute
• 13 years old and older: 12 – 16 breaths per minute
Check your child’s respiration rate (breathing rate). Faster or slower than the established ranges are abnormal, unless the child had been engaging in intense activity.

When you check on your child’s respiration rate, do it discreetly. A person tends to subconsciously try to make their respiration rate fit what they know to be normal, so there is a likelihood that your child would slow their breathing down, and you would not get the real picture of whether or not your child is breathing faster than normal. The way to check respiration rate discreetly is to be checking their pulse, whether checking for real or just pretending, while actually watching and counting the rise and fall of their chest or stomach. Each rise and fall is one breath. Do this for 30 seconds, multiply the number of breaths by two, and you have the breaths per minute.

A person with pneumonia, whether a child or not, will have less space for air in their lungs. This means each inhalation can take in less air, from which they can get less oxygen. The body’s organs and muscles thrive on oxygen, and a reduction in the amount of oxygen will trigger compensatory mechanisms in the body. When there is less oxygen available in each breath, the body compensates by breathing more times in the same amount of time, which is basically breathing faster.