|
| Categories: Diabetes and psychical effects |
| Diabetes and psychical effects | |
|
How to motivate children in dealing with diabetes mellitus
|
| |
If your child gets diabetes mellitus at a very early age, it is not only you who will have to challenge with the disease. The attitude and the schooling about diabetes is mostly exciting for the child, or otherly said, the schooling team tries to present it as exciting. But what will happen if the daily routine comes back? For me it was even at the age of 17 hard to get over the first leap from life in hospital to everyday life without greater damages in reference to my therapy. In the following, I want to mention some ideas how to maintain the child’s motivation so that everyday life will not become problematic.
For children it is important to be praised over and over again. Such a feedback gives them the possibility to proof themselves and their surrounding that they make progress in their own exploration of the environment. Examples can be found in everyday situations: in the summer on the playground, where children are proud to slide for the first time; or by doing handicrafts for christmas. Since the dealing with diabetes mellitus requires a lot of routine, it is neccessary to support the child constantly in this respect, too.
- Although it is possible to influence one’s own blood sugar value, it sometimes happens that one reaches a bad value. Make yourself and the child aware of this condition to avoid feelings of guilt. Life cannot be calculated to a 100 %, the same is true for diabetes mellitus.
- Do not let diabetes determine your everyday life. Try to make your child aware of the fact that you are proud of it, absolutely independent from diabetes.
- Try to relate any action that manages diabetes with an exciting and playful activity. While changing the catheter you could possibly tell a story about “good insulin” that runs through the body in order that it becomes big and powerful.
- Divert your child when measuring the blood sugar. Possibilities would be, among others, to hold the measuring instrument or to swing the insulin ampoule.
- Praises are very important if your child was brave when it was at the diabetologist or at the oculist, for instance.
- Encourage your child: relate unpleasant things with pleasant ones. You could, for example, play a favourite game of your child after any blood sugar measurement or you could show a popular cartoon. In this way, negative activities lose their fright.
The older the child gets, the more it becomes used to the diabetes therapy. Finally, the therapy will become a rudimentary part of life. The foundation stone is layed by you in the first years of diabetes. There is no doubt that you have got to have the right feel for it. We hope that we could give you some ideas.
Translated by Kristin Henke
|
Diabetes Information | Contact | Board
|
| Linked articles: |
|
|
|
|
| Comments (0) |
|
in Version 00.08.49