My kids absolutely hate taking medications. Because I figured your kids might be the same way, I have some useful tips to help kids take their prescriptions. With help from FLAVORx, hopefully your kids will be able to help the medicine go down!
I feel very grateful that my kids are usually pretty healthy, and don’t get sick very often. However, when they do get sick, it is almost always at a super inconvenient time. A few weeks ago my little ballerina got sick just hours before her first dance recital. She was feeling so sick and yucky that she didn’t even care about missing it. I think I was the one who was most heart-broken over it!
When my kids do get sick, the last thing that they are willing to do is to take medications. They hate it… With a passion. It’s amazing to me how well those tiny mouths can resist, gag and spit to ensure that not a single drop of medication gets past their throats. Because we have had our fair share of medication mishaps, my hubby and I have developed a few tricks to get our kids to take their meds.
• Ask for both – When picking up a prescription, most pharmacies will offer you a metered spoon or syringe. I ask for both (and the kind people at our pharmacy are always nice enough to oblige). I then offer both options to my kids when it’s medicine time. I find that giving them some options is a good way to help them feel as though they have some control over the situation.
• Small doses – it always seemed logical to us to try one big syringe full of meds and get it over and done with in one shot. However, we soon realized that if the kid spits out half of the meds, it’s hard to know exactly how much they got into their mouth. This can get tricky, because you want to make sure that they get the right dosage, without over-dosing. If you split the dosage into 3-4 smaller amounts, it’s easier gauge how many smaller doses actually “made it in”!
• Reminder for Moms – ok, I will admit it! I have a really hard time remembering if/when I have given out meds to my kids. Some days (especially days when you have a couple of sick kids in the house) just blur together for me. I recently saw a clever solution to this, from landeeseelandeedo. Simply make yourself a little chart, using permanent marker, right on the medicine bottle. Then you can check it off every time you have given out meds, making an easy little reference sheet!
• Sweeten the Deal- I think what my kids hate most about taking meds is the taste, and I can’t say that I blame them! Some are really, really terrible. I recently found a new product to help with this, that I will definitely be using next time we have a sick kiddo. The product, FLAVORx, is a flavoring that can be added to your child’s medication, by the pharmacist, to help make the taste more pleasing to your child. It comes in 15 custom flavors, is sugar free, dye free, casein free, and gluten free. FLAVORx has already been used to flavor 90 million medications in the U.S., and is available at major pharmacies nationwide. They also have a Fred the Flavorbot, and a useful iPhone app that allows you to find a flavor that compliments your specific medication well, and helps you to find a pharmacy near you that carries it. For more information be sure to check out the FLAVORx website today.
With these clever tips and a lot of TLC your kids will be back to their running, jumping, and ballet-twirling selves in no time at all!
*Conversation time. Do you struggle with getting your kids to take their medicine? Have you tried FLAVORx?
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