How to Teach Your Kid to Swallow Pills?
While it is comparatively easy with liquid medicines, the introduction of pills into your and your progeny’s lives can be fraught with difficulties. If you did encounter with resistance or failure, don’t let it get you into a despondent mood. You just need some guided practice. Properly handled, it will become a successful experience bolstering your self-esteem and turning into a habitual action before long.
Having achieved adroitness in this, don’t stop reading up on the subject; also, never omit a chance to consult the prescriber. In fact, it is better to do that in any case that looks more problematic than it could be reasonably expected.
When is the time to start on pills?
Since children develop each at their own rate, the time when they are ready for a pill will be different for everyone. Therefore, comparing your child to any other, including siblings, is not a good idea. The average age when you can introduce taking pills is not earlier than four, and the kid should be willing to try a new experience.
First, you are going to put in some practice yourself, thereby blunting the pressure of the time when it will be necessary. To begin with pick an ice cream or something equally small, a cake sprinkle will also do. A candy or an M&M will also do. As soon as you feel you are making good headway, switch on to bigger items – larger candies, chocolate chips. Follow it up with vitamin pills that must be swallowed whole and not chewed. Be ready that the learning process can take some time, and you should allot about five minutes to it daily for two weeks and more if necessary.
While practicing, make sure there are no distractions, TV screens are off, smartphones are put away.
Prepare a small M&M and a glass of water. What you need to teach your kid is to get the candy down before its color comes off on the child’s tongue. The time limit is stipulated because there are stimulant pills without a coating, so if it stays on the tongue long enough, it will begin to dissolve and may be found to taste bitter, providing an unpleasant surprise for the kid and create difficulties with swallowing, as well as an added unwillingness to attempt it for the next time.
Take care that water is always near at hand to help develop a habit of taking medicine with water only. Washing pills down with water the child has their throat lubricated so that the pill goes down faster and doesn’t hurt the throat. It is the safest practice that should be observed unfailingly.
Nose work
You may not have thought about it, but manipulating your child’s nose for the moment can be really helpful. As soon as you have put the pill on the tongue and added a draught of water, before swallowing pull the nose closer to the eyes. This makes the trick unexpectedly easier because, holding the nose in this position, you facilitate the swallowing process by prodding the eustachian tube gently along. It is all the more advisable when the pill has a bitter taste: the sense of smell gets impeded consequently blunting the sense of taste.
How to set about it
As you are nearing the very first pill intake, begin with talking with the kid about acquiring skills in general and their abilities in mastering their recent skills; proceed with an explanation of the importance of taking medication to make them well-disposed towards the procedure. Lastly, describe the procedure. To help things along you can begin with swallowing a prescribed pill or a vitamin pill herself.
Keep your calm
As you kid is about to take a pill, make sure you retain your composure. Once you get tense or nervous, you are sure to pass it on to your child. Even should something go wrong, stay collected, don’t flare up or overreact.
In order to get the pill swallowed, make sure the kid:
- is sitting up with a straight back keeping the head straight too
- doesn’t throw back the head (it will interfere with easy swallowing)
- drinks some water to get himself kind of accustomed to swallowing
- now you can place the pill on his tongue and give him some more water to gulp down. It could be helpful to let him drink with a straw for distraction.
Read the instructions to learn whether the pill should be taken when the stomach is empty, or it can go with a modicum of food. If it is the latter case, you can employ a thicker drink and offer the kid a milkshake. Also, you can use some sweet sauce (or any other suchlike stuff) as a carrier for the pill.
Dealing with pills that are very large and can present difficulties, consult the prescriber if it would be all right to cut it in two or three pieces.
Be supportive
Has the kid succeeded in downing the pill? Give him praise. Has he failed? Stay cool and tell him everything’s fine and he’s got to give it another go. If he doesn’t feel up to it, leave it – find the right time to resume practice later.
