The Tylenol only when necessary is fine. The Advil is important because it is an NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drug), which reduces swelling, and swelling slows down healing.
100mg, 3-4 times a day is the proper dosage for a 20lb one year old.
He might not be complaining, but it wouldn't hurt, and could only help to give him the proper dosage, but any NSAID is hard on the stomach, so try to make sure he takes it with lots of food.
With most medication, it's better to give a full dose and heal up quickly and get off it, than to keep taking an insufficient amount for a longer time. Better to just not take any.
Same deal when your kid has a fever. If he has a fever of 103 or whatever, don't screw around with half doses, cuz he's just a little fellow. Give him a full and proper dose, if you want it to do any good. Also note that in bad cases (Say you're out camping and he spikes a fever and you're trying to get out of the bush but need to wait till light or whatever) you can double up Advil and Tylenol. We had to do this once with our daughter for a few hour stretch to keep her temp below 100F.
FYI, and this is EXCELLENT info to have in your First aid kit for both children and adults.
For Ibuprofen (Advil), the max dosage is 40mg/kg per day.
so for a 34lb kidlet, that would be 15.4kg x 40mg = 576mg
Ibuprofen is usually dosed every 6-8 hours, so you can choose to give 192mg every 8 hours, or 144mg every 6 hours.
For Acetaminophen (Tylenol), the max dosage is 90mg/kg per day.
So for a 34lb kidlet, that would be 15.4kg x 90mg = 1386mg
Acetaminophen is usually dosed every 4-6 hours, so you can choose to give 346mg every 6 hours, or 230mg every 4 hours.
One point of note, is that Tylenol has a very narrow therapeutic index.
What that means, is that the amount that is toxic is not much more than what is required to be effective therapeutic. In the case of children, while therapeutic dosage is 90mg/kg per day, a single dose of aprox 200mg/kg could be toxic, so barely twice the therapeutic dosage. In adults, toxicity coul dbe reached with as little as 150mg/kg in a single dose. Reason being, children typically have a larger liver and kidneys for their body size, than adults and can metabolize the excess Acetaminophen more readily.
Damn, you're good! 33-34lbs. Is it bad if we dialed back the medication to just 100mg of Advil? It just seemed like a lot. I'm not anti-medicine, but I try to take the least amount that will get the job done. They told us the Advil was for pain and swelling, Tylenol is just if he needs more for pain. He's not in too much pain, so we are giving that only when necessary.
