Juvenile Diabetes

Checking for blood glucose is simple. You only require a blood glucose check or test which contains a special needle, called a lancet. Just stick your child’s finger with the lancet to get a drop of blood. There are some lancets that have a spring-load feature, making sticking with a needle a less painful process.

Teach Your Child to Manage Diabetes
Your child is helpless against the seriousness of diabetes. He/she looks up to you for support and guidance. He/she may not know or understand his/her condition entirely and wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do in order to keep it from worsening.

While you, as a parent, are expected to do all that you can to help your child, there will come a time when you may not be able to. That is why it is important that you impart self-reliance in your child and teach him/her how to deal with diabetes as early as now.

Some of the basics of diabetes management that you want your child to learn include:

1) Learning to eat regularly
2) Exercising regularly
3) Taking insulin regularly
4) Monitoring their blood sugar
5) Visiting the doctor regularly

As your child grows older, he/she will become more self-sufficient and will be making decisions about his/her treatment and diabetes management on his/her own. He/she may also tend to go to the doctor alone rather than go with you.

At first, it might feel unsettling but this is something that you need to be prepared for. Let things take their normal course, but remain in communication with the doctor, especially if the child is uncommunicative after a visit from the clinic. Staying in the know without stepping over any boundaries is one good way of helping your child cope with diabetes while at the same time boosting his/her self-esteem and confidence in handling the condition.

Understand Your Child’s Metabolism
Controlling blood glucose levels is a difficult thing to do and even more so during adolescence. Certain bodily changes causes hormone levels in an adolescent child’s body to fluctuate, affecting his/her metabolism.

Several studies have shown that the growth hormones, which are activated during adolescent years to promote the growth of bone and muscle mass, can affect the action of insulin in the body. This could complicate your child’s diabetes without proper management.

Another hormone that is affected is adrenaline, which is also released by the pancreas, the same as insulin. The function of adrenaline is to stimulate the release of stored glucose in the body whenever blood sugar levels in the body start to fall.

All these changes could cause the blood glucose levels to rise and fall erratically. They could become too low or too high at a given time and your child may have a difficult time coping with these fluctuations. It is important that you let your child know it is not his/her fault that his/her blood glucose levels are too high or too low, but that is no reason to give up trying to deal with it.