Make Wiping Your Child’s Nose Easier With Boogie Wipes

It is cold and flu season here in the states, and I have already seen my share of snot-caked little faces.  Little children get more colds than older kids and adults, and they can turn into an agitated mess when you say “Honey, I need to wipe your nose”.  These wipes are going to make your job as chief booger-wiper a lot easier!

When I first saw Boogie Wipes, I will confess that I thought it was another expensive product to separate first-world parents from their money.  After all, I grew up on dry tissues and I survived.

I was wrong.  These really work.

At first, I thought that the use of moisture was the key to their success.  Not so.  Parents told me that using a regular baby wipe didn’t “do the deal” the way a Boogie Wipe took care of the snot problem and made kids calm down about nose-wiping.  I had to find out what really made this product better.

1. Boogie Wipes have a few important ingredients that separate them from the standard baby wipes.  The first ingredient is water.  The second ingredient is sodium chloride; good old salt.  Saline is a combo of these two ingredients, and saline softens the gluey crud that is dried-on snot.  It also thins the still-wet snot so you can wipe it away without pressing so hard on tender skin.  Yeah!
2. The next four ingredients are aloe leaf juice, chamomile flower extract, vitamin E and glycerin.  All gentle and (to most children) non-irritating skin conditioners.  I am a huge fan of Puffs Plus tissues, but these wipes are gentler than my fave tissues.  Children’s skin is so much more delicate than ours, and the ingredients in snot are so irritating.  That is even before it becomes a dried-on coating.  Boogie Wipes leave a thin coating of skin conditioners after you wipe your child’s face.  This coating acts as a slight skin barrier for the next drip of snot.  Brilliant!

The remaining ingredients are preservatives that prevent your open container of Boogie Wipes from becoming a source of germs instead of a source of relief.  I am sure that there are children who react to these preservatives, but I haven’t yet met any families that report problems over the years that this product has been available in NY.

Unless you know your child will react to these specific preservatives, I recommend trying the unscented version first (they come in fresh and lavender scents too) and using them before your child gets a cold.  It is kinder to find out that they are sensitive to any ingredients before their skin is already irritated by all that snot from an illness.  Kids whose skin is going to react will likely do so when well, but their skin can recover from any irritation more quickly when their immune system is not also fighting a bad cold.

The Boogie folks do sell a saline spray as well as wipes, and I am all for using saline spray to loosen up internal nose crud.  The problem with sprays isn’t that they don’t work.  They do, and they work well.

The problem is that children are naturally avoidant of us sticking things up their noses, and they are really bad at controlling the “sniff” in order to efficiently suck the spray up into their sinuses.  I teach children how to blow their noses and how to handle sprays.  It is part of my job as an OTR.  Not the best part, but nevertheless, a part of teaching ADLs.  I haven’t had much success teaching children under 3 to use nose sprays.  They just get more frightened and upset.  If you have an older child or a child that seems less afraid of nose examinations at the pediatrician, then go ahead and give sprays a try.  It can really loosen up a clogged nose.

Good luck trying Boogie Wipes, or try the generic versions that I am starting to see on store shelves.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so manufacturers are telling us that they also know that these products really work!