Today’s Ask Dr.Mom’s post deals with the dreaded medicine struggle. What to do when faced with a crying child absolutely refusing to take her medication? I’m no Mary Poppins but I’ve got some tips to share.
Dear Dr.Mom
My daughter needs to take antibiotics but she is giving me such a hard time. Is there anything I can do to make this process easier?
–Michelle
Helping the medicine go down easy can be a difficult task at times. What to do when you know your child needs to take antibiotics and her mouth is clamped down and she outright refuses to take it? Here are some tips for helping that medicine go down easier. Unfortunately, unlike the cute Mary Poppins jingle, it’s not always as easy as “just a spoonful of sugar”.
For infants and toddlers I like using the syringe dropper to administer the medicine. Squirt a little at a time into the pocket of the cheek, not directly on the tongue. Give your child a gentle blow on the face. This will trigger a swallowing response before your child has a chance to spit it out. I did feel odd at first blowing in my child’s face but I knew he needed the medicine and it worked with minimal crying.
Preschool and school age children are more amenable to a variety of tactics. You may have to try a few from the list below before you find what works for your child.
Try offering juice immediately following the medicine. I do not like to mix the medicine with the juice as it is possible the child may not finish that cup of juice. Have the cup ready, show your child that she will get some juice immediately following her dose of medicine. You can even break up the dose by giving half, then some juice, then the rest of the dose followed by juice again. Be gentle and talk your child through the process.
Your child could care less for juice? What does she like? For my son, it was chocolate milk. I had the medicine in one hand and the chocolate milk in another. With each sip of medicine, he got a sip of chocolate milk. It worked.
My daughter? She’s all about the jelly beans. So, once she took her medicine, I doled out a few jelly beans. So yes, I suppose a spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down.
Make sure your child’s medication is flavored. When picking up your child’s medication from the pharmacist, ask if it can be flavored (if it isn’t already).
If your child is particularly resistant, offer a sticker reward chart. With each successful dose she takes, give her a sticker. At the end, why not reward her with a small gift? The dollar store is great for that!
Involve your child in the whole process. Let her pick out the cup she will use for her juice “chaser”. If possible, let her help you measure out her dose. Regaining some control will diminish some of the battle.
Be consistent: have a set time each day that your child will receive her medication. This way she knows when it is coming. Give her a five minute warning to allow her time to pep herself up.
Try not to engage in any physical struggles. Instead, talk with your child. Emphasize the importance of taking a particular medication. Explain how it will help her body get better. Include specifics, like “this medicine will help you get better so you can go over to your friend’s house to play”.
Is it the delivery method? If the liquid isn’t cutting it see if a particular medication comes in the form of a chewable or melt away. This may work for the older child. Additionally, some children will still do well with liquid but prefer the dropper syringe as opposed to the spoon. I prefer using the dropper syringe for as long as possible. This ensures dose accuracy and less chance of losing some of the medicine due to spills.
Be understanding but firm. Certainly empathy goes a long way but when your child needs to take a particular medication, it is non-negotiable. Help her realize the importance of this. Explain to her that she can not move on to her next desired activity until she has finished taking her medicine.
Good Luck and I hope some of these helped.
What about you? Have you struggled with getting your child to take his medicine? What were some ways you found to make it easier?
**Submit your parenting or health related question to mommamd4two(at)aol(dot)com. I feature a question or topic every week. If you don’t have a question, but have a topic you’d like to see me cover, please e-mail me or leave a comment. **
**original publish date: December 2010**
My kids all HATE taking medicine…thank you so much for this! I've bookmarked this page for future reference 😉
I have the opposite problem. My daughter loves taking medicine. Maybe it's the sweetness of it. But she asks when she can have medicine and I have to constantly remind her it's only when you're sick.
We had our fair share of medicine when my boys were little. I had also been told to do the soft blow on their face. It works amazingly well.
I am so glad JDaniel takes medicine easily. His allergies mean we have to take a pill and two liquids medicines every night.
These are great suggestions, but there are kids who will absolutely refuse oral medication. My daughter as an infant would make herself sicker by immediately vomiting up any/all medication. Doctors and nurses blamed my bad parenting skills. Eventually, she vomited on the doctor, and their understanding changed. Our amazing compounding pharmacist was able to formulate suppositories for some medications, and we got others as injections. This saved us all a lot of unnecessary battling until the time she was willing to accept oral medication.
I have a child who is the same… if we use any of these methods he will just vomit the medicine back up. We have tylenol suppositories …. were you able to get ammoxicillin in suppository form as well?
It's very strange but my 11 month old loves taking medicine. He's been on reflux medicine since he was about 2 months old and he's never had a problem taking it. And everytime he's on antibiotics it's no problem. Then again, he's the son of a girl who would sneak into the fridge and drink amoxicillin everytime I was sick because I loved the flavor so much.
My son hated to have he's medicine.. until we discovered he loved the taste of grape.. so I make sure that all the medicine I buy are grape flavor and when the doctor prescribes something, the pharmacist is really good about mixing in grape flavor… or something sweet… now he loves taking he's medicine.
Great tips!
My daughter had to take a medicine she hated and my husband had a great idea that I thought would never fly, but worked wonders! He told her that if she was ready for kindergarten at 7:15, she could throw a fit for 10 minutes before taking her medicine. If she wasn't ready until 7:30, she only had 30 seconds to throw a fit. Either way, it was ok to throw a fit and we would set a timer to be sure she could throw it for as much time as she earned. She wasn't ready until 7:30 (of course), so we set the timer for 30 sec and then she took her medicine. Worked like a charm. I suspect because she felt "in control"!!!!!
My middle son will not take meds for anything. Luckily, our doctor is aware of this and knew that there was no way he'd take antibiotics 2x/day for 10 days and he gave my son an antibiotics shot instead. Which of course, my son HATED. But, it was over and done with, instead of 10 days of total stress!
For my other two, juice or a bribe works. Though, they really flavored the last batch so it was SO sweet, so they wanted to take that one!
I feel very lucky my girls were good medicine-takers because they both needed a lot as babies!
Mine will do anything for a jelly bean…just one! My 2 year old has yet to need medicine, so I'm holding out that it will work for him when the time comes!
Thank you so much for reposting this! Such great tips.
My son finished his medicine after several different attempts — he liked the option of drinking it in a cup (color of his choice). And then of course he asked for more.
I didn't have a problem with giving my two month old her Vitamin D drops until I had to start giving her Zantac for reflux. She screams like I'm physically hurting her when I give it to her. That smells and tastes so terrible. She freaks out any time we get a syringe near her. Gas drops, Tylenol, vitamins… She won't take any of it so long as we try getting Zantac in her mouth.
Hi Melissa! I mentioned your post in my blog, Pinteresting Way of Life. I am new to this and finding it very hard to blog with an iPad. I did mention your site in my post and tagged your blog/web address. Thank you so much for sharing. My blog is about how I use pins from Pinterest for just about everything. Today it was trying to get my 3yo to take his antibiotics!
I put a drop or two of Hershey’s syrup in the med cup. He had to drink it all to get to the chocolate.