What Happens When Your Child Gets Diabetes?
When you hear the word diabetes, you may be surprised that children can get this condition. It’s true that type 1 diabetes affects most of the children diagnosed with diabetes each year, and type 2 diabetes can develop in children as well, though it is less common. But there are ways to deal with this challenge, including early detection and proper treatment. If your child has been diagnosed with diabetes, keep reading to learn what happens when your child gets diabetes and how you can best treat this disease and help your child live as healthy of a life as possible.
Tips to Help Your Child With Diabetes
As a parent of a diabetic child, it’s important to regularly check your child’s blood sugar, provide insulin, encourage your child to eat the right food, and maintain their blood sugar levels in a healthy range. It may seem a lot, but if you are prepared for anything that may happen, you’ll be all right.
Stay on target with Blood Sugar tests. A medical professional, such as your child’s doctor, will give you guidelines as to how often to check their blood sugar levels, the ideal numbers, and which monitoring device would be best for them. You can prick their finger or check a different part of their body, or they may have a special blood glucose meter. You may be required to administer insulin in one of two ways, either by injection or by wearing an insulin pump. Your doctor will inform you how much to administer and when to do so.
Lifestyle and home remedies
– Encourage them to take on more responsibility for their diabetes management.
– Insist on emphasizing lifelong diabetes care
– Teach your child how to take care of himself by testing his or her blood sugar and injecting insulin.
– Help your child make healthy choices for what they eat.
– Allow your child to engage in as much physical activity as possible.
– Build a positive relationship between your child and his or her diabetes treatment team.
– Use medical identification tags for your child.
– The habits you teach your child today will make it easier for him or her to manage his or her diabetes, ensuring an active and healthy life.
– For a morning energy drink, make sattu (roasted chickpea flour) in hot water.
– Sprinkling amla powder and turmeric powder with a teaspoon of honey in the morning is also good for diabetes.
– Twice a week, drink Karela juice, which is useful for diabetes.
School and diabetes
Working with your child’s daycare provider or the school nurse will make sure they are trained to watch for symptoms of high and low blood sugar levels. If need be, the school nurse might need to administer insulin or check your child’s blood sugar levels.
School accommodations for children with diabetes must be made in order to ensure that every child is given a fair chance.
Your child’s emotions
Children who have diabetes are not just more emotional because of the stress of managing their health, but can actually become irritable as a direct result of high or low blood sugar.
Diabetes can make a child feel different from their peers because of the insulin injections and blood tests they are required to undertake. Parents may get their child to interact with other children who also have diabetes, or take him or her to a diabetes camp. Doing this may help him or her feel less alone.
How To Find Support
What You Can Do:
1. Learn all about diabetes, including when blood sugar should be checked, when and how to deal with highs and lows, and lifestyle changes that should be made. We understand that diabetes affects each person differently, so their treatment plan should be customized to suit their individual needs. It may be different from that of other people with diabetes you know.
The key is to ask the person in your life with whom you’re building a friendship or other connection what they need from you, and then to make those needs a priority. People often have requests that change over time.
2. Go to their doctor’s appointments, if it’s all right with them. You might learn more about how diabetes affects them and how you can be the most helpful. Schedule time for these things in the daily routine to make it easier for people with diabetes to care for themselves – checking blood sugar, making healthy food, and taking a walk.
3. Don’t try to blame everyone with type 2 diabetes.
4. Weight is just one of the things that contributes to it. High blood sugar levels can be difficult to control even with a good diet and a healthy lifestyle.
5. You might share the same toothpaste, but your family member may not want to share anything about diabetes with you. This also applies to diabetes in a friend.
6. Accept the fluctuations of moods that accompany swings in blood sugar levels. The emotional experience of many people can change from one minute to the next from a feeling of joy to one of sadness.
7. Make sure to ask your loved one or someone in your family to tell their doctors if they have felt depressed most days, it could be diabetes.
8. Encourage your child by assuring them you know how hard they’re trying. Tell them about their strengths. Remind them of how much you appreciate their growth.
9. Share tips with them that help them manage their diabetes. Suggest to them that they find friends or join an online or in-person diabetes support group to connect with people who share their experiences. Online resources such as the American Association of Diabetes Educators’ Diabetes Online Community or in-person diabetes support groups are good ways to get started.
