There is no formal way of grading asthma in children in the UK. But your GP may describe your child's asthma as 'mild' or 'severe' depending on how often your child gets symptoms and how bad these symptoms are. For example, if your child has mild asthma, he or she might get symptoms more than once a week, but not every day. If your child's asthma is more severe, he or she may get symptoms most days and sometimes at night.

Some children have what doctors call brittle or difficult to treat asthma. These children need to take high doses of preventer drugs (usually steroids), and they also often need to use a reliever (the blue inhaler). These children's symptoms may also get very bad quite suddenly, and they may need to be treated in hospital.

Your GP may also talk about how bad your child's asthma is according to the treatments needed to control it. ^[11] Doctors talk about steps. Each step shows what treatment your child needs to control his or her asthma. Asthma that is Step 1 needs the fewest treatments. Asthma that is Step 5 needs the most treatments.

This is what the different steps mean:

Doctors in the UK use the stepwise approach to treating asthma. ^[11] They talk about 'stepping up' treatment when they increase the dose or the number of treatments your child needs. If your child's asthma is under control, your GP may reduce the dose or take some treatments away. This is called 'stepping down'. Your GP will always try to give your child the smallest amount of treatments that keep his or her asthma under control.

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