Table 3.

Interpersonal (parent, family) level barriers to physical activity and associated parental quotes

1. Parental Fear of EIA Due to Children’s Lack of Symptoms Awareness	“I like that she try a sport, but I get scared at the same time that she can get the asthma making a sport. I get scared…That she make exercise for a long time and she don’t recognize when she’s short of breath and she can get a asthma attack.” (Mother, 6) “My concern is that she will lose her breath, and fall on the floor and collapse and no one is going to notice because she’s not going to tell you that her chest hurting her or if she can’t breathe because she wants to control that and continue playing.” (Mother, 9) “I’m more afraid of the baseball and all that soccer thing—because of the running around a lot, I’ve noticed that that’s what get’s her asthma more activated. You know it just triggers it.” (Mother, 8) “Once he gets to the point that he can tell me, “I can’t breathe,” I think I’ll be a little more relaxed because I’ll feel like I won’t have to be looking at the signs.” (Mother, 5)
2. Children’s Refusal and Parental Non-adherence to Asthma Medications	“She tells me, I don’t want to get no treatment, I don’t want my pump…She says that she’s tired of the treatment already.” (Mother, 7) “She gets frustrated that she has [asthma]…She gets frustrated taking the medicine, going to the hospital all the time.” (Mother, 11) “They get hyper. They can get addicted to the medicine. Sometimes they depend too much on their medication. So that’s why I don’t want that they get to that point too dependent on the medication. I want that they learn how to breathe…I try to give as less medication as possible. Because I have experience with one nephew that my sister start giving the medication, and that complicated his asthma. The more medication she gave him, more worse he get.” (Mother, 6) “[The doctor] wanted to give him daily medication and I refused…Pumping them up with all kinds of different types of steroids and inhalers is just not going to work. Their body needs to learn to function without all this stuff.” (Mother, 15)
3. Parental Challenges to Managing Asthma	“I got to be careful. I don’t want to take the risk. That she got get asthma that she got to get hospitalized again. I [am] a single mother with two kids…what supposed to do with the other one so I trying to keep both healthy…And I don’t got nobody to help me so its hard.” (Mother, 1) “I was going to sign him up this September for basketball because he seems to really like it. But he’s doing his first communion also. And it’s just too much for me because I have the baby…” (Mother, 5)