During a day at the beach a few summers back, Karen Schneider spent most of her time tending to her two-and-a-half year old son Jeffrey in the toilet. “He told me his tummy hurt and we went to the washroom and he had an explosion in the toilet,” recalls Schneider. “We cleaned up and went back to the beach and within 10 minutes he had to go again. Back up we went, same drill.” Schneider wasn't sure what caused Jeffrey's diarrhea but after several trips to the toilet, he was feeling better the next day.

Here's what you need to know about the symptoms and causes of diarrhea, how you should treat it at home, when to take your child to the doctor and what you can do to prevent it.

Symptoms

When a child has diarrhea, bowel movements are loose and watery and occur more frequently than usual, says Dr. Joseph Gigante, a pediatrician at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn. There is a wide range of diarrhea—it can be mild (one or two watery stools) or severe (10 watery stools in a day). With diarrhea, the stool may be a different colour than usual and there may or may not be blood in it. It's also not uncommon for a child to have some vomiting alongside the diarrhea.