TREATING CHILD WITH MEDICATIONS

How long. A mistake that is all too easy to make is to assume that because a child acts well, he or she is well. Taking a child off medication too soon can cause relapses and complications. The symptoms of an illness can subside long before the illness itself is over. The child’s earache goes away, the fever drops, the appetite returns to normal, and the parent thinks the child is well again. In fact, the healing process may barely have begun. Strep infections, for example, require ten straight days of antibiotic treatment. Some infections – urinary tract and ear infections, for instance – often take even longer, even though the symptoms may disappear in a day.

Therefore, instructions such as “Give for ten full days,” “Continue for two weeks,” “Give until finished,” are not just so many words. They are precise and necessary directions to you from the doctor. Consider such an instruction not as a request, but as an order.

How to. It’s best to let your child find out early that taking medication is just one of those things children have to do now and then. It is one of those situations in which you are the boss and the child doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

Every parent needs to know how to give a child medicine, and the parent who reports to the doctor that “my child just won’t take your medication” is forcing the doctor to resort to another method of treatment which may be less effective. In extreme cases, a child who cannot be medicated at home must be hospitalized so that the appropriate medications can be given by professionals.

A young child, approached in a reassuring and matter-of-fact manner, will usually accept medication without any trouble. There are ways in which you can make it easy for both you and the child.

Liquid medicine can be given directly from the spoon (after carefully measuring) – in fact, many medications designed for children are specially flavored so that they are not unpleasant to taste. An alternative method is to use a non-glass medicine dropper to squirt the liquid slowly into the child’s cheek. If you use this method you must be very careful not to direct the stream of liquid forcefully against the back of the throat and down the windpipe.

If the medicine doesn’t taste good, give the child a sweet treat afterwards to take away the bad taste (or disguise the medicine in a little stewed apple, ice cream, or juice). If you do this, however, make sure the child takes the entire portion.

Some infants and toddlers will accept medicine in the form of chewable tablets, or even regular tablets or capsules that can be swallowed whole. However, do not give pills and capsules to even a cooperative child under the age of five. Small children can easily choke to death on a bulky pill. If the medication for the young child is not available in liquid form, mash tablets or empty the contents of capsules into a small quantity of juice or food before giving them to the child. Again, you must watch to see the child gets the whole dose.

After the age of five or six your child can probably swallow tablets or capsules whole. You can help the child learn how to do this by taking advantage of occasions when he or she needs a nonprescription remedy – aspirin for a slight headache, perhaps. If the child is willing, show him or her how to put the pill on the back of the tongue and swallow it with a drink or with a half-teaspoonful of ice cream, stewed apple, or jelly. Whenever a child is taking a pill, watch to be sure the medication goes down smoothly and the child is in no danger of choking.

A final word: don’t ever try to fool a child into taking medication by saying it’s “a sweet” or “just like sweets.” Very many cases of drug poisoning have occurred in children who helped themselves to medications that looked or tasted like sweets. Many doctors even discourage the use of children’s vitamin pills that are sweet-flavoured, brightly coloured, or shaped like cartoon characters. Such products blur the distinction in the child’s mind between sweets and drugs and the child may make a tragic mistake.

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