Q: My daughter is three and a half years old. She gets cold often. We stay in California, so she is exposed to cold climate. She wheezes also. Can you suggest how to keep the child safe from getting cold? How can the wheezing be treated? She is a poor eater and weighs 27 pounds. How can I increase my daughter's weight? Please advise.

A:It is not entirely clear whether you meant that your daughter catches a lot of colds or whether she has a low body temperature. I expect you mean that she gets many colds; these are virus infections which are very common in children of her age, until they have become immune to the common viruses. The children catch the viruses at day nurseries or from older brothers and sisters. It is very doubtful that cold weather itself causes the symptoms. However, we do recommend that children should be dressed warmly in cold weather with an insulated jacket, a scarf and gloves. It sounds as if she tends to wheeze when she has a virus. If she develops definite asthma, she could be treated with a bronchodilator drug which opens up the small airways in the lungs and steroids which reduce inflammation. They are given at this age with a spacer which looks a little like a model airship. The drugs are sprayed into the device and then the child breathes in an out and the drugs are inhaled into the lungs. Many children with repeated infections do not gain weight well. The important thing is to measure her weight regularly - about once a month - and to plot it on a growth chart. She may be relatively light but be gaining weight steadily.