Living With Juvenile Diabetes

Helping Your Child with Type 1 Diabetes

Your Child Has Type 1 Diabetes
For the individual child and the whole family, type 1 diabetes changes life. Just remember,  Type 1 diabetes may change your family’s life, but it needn’t become your family’s life.

Even with diabetes, your child can lead a full and normal emotional life. On this site, we will talk about some of the challanges that you may encounter in raising you child with type 1 diabetes.

Young Children and Type 1 Diabetes
Often times, young children may have difficulty understanding the sudden changes–glucose monitoring, insulin injections, food restrictions–that type 1 diabetes brings to their lives. Some common reactions among children are:

• A feeling that they are being punished for disobedience
• Feelings of shame or guilt
• Fear of death, because diabetes starts with the sound “die”

You child may start to resent you or act with some hostility towards you, as you as a parent are supposed to be all-powerful and protect them from bad things. They may expect you to make their diabetes go away.

Self-Care and Your Care
It is extremely important that you, as the parent of a child with type 1 diabetes, supervise, encourage, and foster the independence your child needs to successfully manage type 1 diabetes. This can sometimes be a fine line between being careful and being overprotective. Instead of developing a feeling of mastery over his or her environment, the child with an overprotecting parent may develop a “sickly” self-image, use type 1 diabetes to exert control, use low blood sugar as a means to avoid unpleasant activities, or let high blood sugar develop to a point of crisis.

It is imperative that you encourage your diabetic child to care for themselves. This helps to develop their independence and self-esteem.