Using Essential Oils with Kids

Want to use essential oils with kids but wonder how to use them safely? Or maybe they’re just not a part of your daily routine and so you forget to use them? Essential oils can be a great help for busy moms wanting to boost their kids’ health and wellness. Here are some tips on using them safely and easily with your children!

How to Use Essential Oils With Kids - Tips for safety and easy use!

Disclosure: *This post may include affiliate links. As an affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read the disclosures and terms for more information.

1) Choose Essential Oils Safe for Kids

You’ll want to do a little homework to find out which oils and blends are safe for use with children. Same thing goes for pregnant and nursing moms, as well as those who have compromised immune systems. Essential oils can be a great asset in the family medicine cabinet, but not all oils are appropriate for the immature and growing bodies of your children! The book Essential Oils Safety by Robert Tisserand is my go-to for this kind of information. 

(Psst… to help you our here, I also have a post with a cheat sheet on essential oils and child safety.)

2) Dilute Essential Oils Appropriately

Before using essential oils with kids, you’ll want to make sure that they are properly diluted. You dilute an essential oil by “watering it down” with a carrier oil such as Fractionated Coconut Oil (my favorite), jojoba, or other carrier oils.

Diluting an essential oils make sure that your child’s bodily systems won’t get too much essential oils. Oftentimes, less is more! Oils are absorbed very easily by the skin, and just one drop of essential oils is the same as applying an enormous amount of plant material to your child’s skin. A 1-2% dilution is recommended for children under 12 years old. 

3) Administer Oils Safely & Effectively

Topical application (rubbing the diluted oil onto the skin) and inhalation (diffusing the oil into the air) are the two most common and recommended ways for using essential oils with kids. They should never ingest essential oils in drinks or otherwise. Whether you apply topically or diffuse often depends on your goals at the moment.

You might want to diffuse an immune boosting blend in your home when a cold is threatening, or you may have a child coughing at night who just needs a little oil rubbed on their chest or feet. 

How to Use Essential Oils With Kids - Tips for safety and easy use!

4) Treat Oils Like Medicine   

Essential oils are natural and wonderful additions to your home life! However, essential oils still need to be treated with caution and respect. As I said, they are powerful and potent materials! Treat them like any other medication.

They should be kept out of reach of children. My kids have been kind of enamored by the roller bottles we use so we had to chat about how they were like medicine, not toys or perfume, and only mommy can put them on them. 

Read: Essential oils NOT to use with children

5) But DO Start Using Essential Oils With Kids!

I was so skeptical of essential oils until a few years ago. But after much research into how they actually work on the body and as I’ve used them in our home every day, I am impressed at their usefulness and how much essential oils really do enhance our health and wellness. They are a helpful tool for any mom! 

For the busy household, it’s worth a little effort to make sure your essential oils are easily accessible to you and that they can be used quickly and conveniently. Otherwise, you’ll have the same problem I did for a while and forget to use them! That’s a waste of money and possibility.

Keeping them in pre-blended roller bottles in the cupboard and in my purse helps a ton. I also keep a diffuser in the main living area with a set of oils we often use nearby. 

 My FAVORITE Oils For Children

Want a convenient and kid-safe way to use oils in your family? I have to tell you about the Kids Line of essential oils from Rocky Mountain Oils! I’ve been using these for months with my kids and they have fast become a staple in our home. What I love about them:

Want to Know More About Using Essential Oils with Kids? 

If you are totally new to essential oils, take my free eCourse, Getting Started with Essential Oils, No MLM Required!

Getting Started with Essential Oils (No MLM Required) - This course works for everyone and is a fantastic quick start guide to using oils. And it's FREE!

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Amanda

    Hi! Can you recommend a second book. The one you suggest is too expensive for me to purchase. Thanks for this information!

    1. Tauna

      I don’t really know any other books I would recommend as highly. What I have done in the past (like recently when my Tisserand book was packed away for a move) was to search online about an issue, being sure to include “Tisserand” in the search box. Many people quote Tisserand and he has a few of his own online writings, so often you can find the info you want from the book that way. The other site I frequent is Aromahead.com and the associated blog http://www.aromahead.com/blog/. There are great articles and free resources there. It’s also where I’m taking my aromatherapy certification course. It is VERY helpful!

      If I find another book I really love and feel comfortable recommending, I’ll be sure to update that here!

  2. Krysta

    Also be careful with epileptics!
    Our Dr didn’t know anything about oils (“they smell nice”) but we did figure out that eucalyptus worked GREAT for his lungs (chronic lung disease due to prematurity) then I tried lavender to help him sleep. From that I noticed a pattern… A sezure the next day, and the. Clusters of sezures.
    Eucalyptus and lavender are both oils that can be bad for Epelepsy. So search whatever conditions and essential oil warnings before using them.
    I stopped the lavender and he is back to his normal level of sezures.

    1. Tauna

      Oh, yes! Thank you for mentioning that!

  3. Charity

    vintageremedies.com
    is an excellent resource for safe oil use. She has several classes available, and if you sign up for the blog email newsletter, she regularly shares recipes for blends to make at home.
    thanks for the giveaway! looking forward to trying the oils I purchased, so much easier than making them at home, and just as cost effective, by the time you purchase empty roller bottles and the necessary oils.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.