How To Know If Your Child Has Pneumonia

Difficulty Breathing

The most common symptom, or indicator, that your child has pneumonia, is difficulty breathing. Your child will have a hard time inhaling, seemingly incapable of taking in a full breath.

Remember that pneumonia, as an infection, causes inflammation and fluid buildup in the air sacs of one or both lungs. When fluid builds up in lungs, it takes up the space that should have been where the air would have been in a full breath. That means, there is only so much air a child with pneumonia can take in, because the space for the air is already occupied with fluid.

Not all young children will be able to express that they are already having difficulty breathing. Some, especially infants and toddlers, will just cry because the difficulty is strange, unfamiliar, and therefore alarming for the child (and the parents). Sometimes the child will cry because breathing is painful.