So, there I was with two children covered in chicken pox. I was grateful that they were both getting over it when they were young, and nervous about my ability to treat them effectively on my own, without over-the-counter remedies.

This was definitely the most serious illness I had faced so far as a father herbalist. How I wished for a page on treating chickenpox like the one I’m about to write, a page from another parent saying this is what I did, and it worked.

Fortunately, my herbalist husband was on hand to remind me to trust plants and use the plants we know.

We discovered that chickenpox is a virus related to herpes, so we chose St. John’s wort as our primary healer, as we know it is effective against herpes.

We made teas for her baths: concoctions of St. John’s wort (dried leaves, stem, and flowers), dried burdock root, and dried licorice root.

To make the concoctions, we would put a large handful of each in about a gallon of boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes.

Then strain the herbs and add the tea to the bath water.

I would also fill a thin cloth bag with oatmeal, calendula flowers, and baking soda and put it in the bathroom. The children squeezed the oat milk onto their skin and even rubbed the bags on the irritated areas. These baths did wonders for relieving itchiness and soothing the kids. What a great herbal treatment for chicken pox!

We also had the kids drink St. John’s wort, burdock, and licorice tea as much as possible while they broke.

Still, we did have times when the itching and burning were very uncomfortable and made sleeping especially difficult.

At such times, St. Johns Worth oil offered some relief. We didn’t come up with the perfect anti-itch formula, but we’ve since learned that tea tree oil can provide incredible relief and that chickweed poultices are effective at cooling and soothing itchiness.

We tried a mixture of baking soda and water and found it to be not only ineffective, but irritating to children. This is actually a popular treatment for chicken pox for some reason.

Hailey had a better time with the chicken pox. When she was one year old, she didn’t get as many as her six year old brother, and for the first few days she was happy and playful and she was still practicing her walk.

He had quite a few pox on his butt and genital area, probably due to the heat from his diaper. Then, just as Rowan was starting to feel better, Hailey had a fever and we noticed that one of the pockmarks on her leg where she was rubbing her diaper was very red and swollen.

We removed the diaper and began to use poultices of marigold flowers and banana leaves (pounded in a mortar with a little water) directly on the smallpox. The swelling and redness were gone by the end of the day and the fever was gone by morning.

We then used these poultices (attached with gauze and duct tape) on any of the pox that seemed the furiousest until they healed.

Another worrying fact that happened to us was that Rowan sat up in bed near the middle of the night with her eyes wide open, yelling nonsense. It was a very unsettling experience for me as a mother, but after doing some research on the web, I found that it is not uncommon during chickenpox. I just calmed him down and she went back to sleep and woke up a few minutes later with no memory of the episode.

The worst of the virus had passed in a span of about four days, and those were intense days for me. My suggestion to you is if you turn to whatever support system you have during this illness.

Find ways to rest yourself, drink nourishing and calming teas, and rest assured that the remedies on this page worked for our family and that your children will get better with love and herbal nutrition. We hope that our herbal treatment for chicken pox works for you.

For more information on St. John’s wort, visit: www.familyherbalremedies.com/saint_johns_wort.html