Kids and Diabetes: It’s a Steep Slope to Climb

Learning to live with diabetes can be an incredibly difficult thing to do. It’s not like most illnesses which might require the occasionally taking of a pill or regular appointments with your doctor, it’s nasty and if you ignore it even for a little while it could cost you. Thing of diabetes like an egocentric drama queen, stop look at it, stop paying it attention and it’ll throw the kind of tantrum you only ever see on reality TV. It’ll damage your eyes, your feet and eventually it could cost you your life.
Saying that, diabetes is liveable with and as long as you pay attention to your blood-sugar levels and take the precautions laid out to you by your GP then you can live a relatively normal life.
The change can be even harder for kids to make as the chances are they won’t understand why they can’t do something their friends can do, it’ll just seem upsetting and unfair! To help ease the process of the acceptance of their condition it’s important to speak to and liaise with their schools.  Most important is making sure your kids’ teachers and the schools in general have the right equipment to help you kids out should they have any complications ore simply need some support when you’re not there.

Make Sure The School Has:

–      Methods of testing blood glucose

–      Emergency insulin packs

–      Antiseptic wipes

–      Water

–      Glucose tablets

Make sure your child knows where all these items are stored in the classroom and knows how to use each of them should the teacher not be available to help them. The trick here is confidence, once a child has built a level of confidence about their diabetes, they know how to treat, how to keep it under control and that it’s nothing to be ashamed of then they’ll find it all a lot easier!