How to Get Young Children to Take Medicine

Last week, a friend on my personal Facebook asked how to get medicine in babies and toddlers. I sympathised. I know how hard it can.

Little did I know that within days, I would be thinking the exact same thing.

Boo has always been brilliant at taking medicine which I am thankful for. It seems her little brother has not inherited that trait.

G has had a bit of a chest infection. I took him to the doctor who gave me the prescription for antibiotics but said wait 24-48 hours to see if it went on its own.

The doctor trip was on the Thursday and, by Monday. G was no better so off to the chemist I went. Thinking he would just take it from a syringe like he does Calpol, I duly tried to squirt it in. The first squirt was fine until he tasted the stuff. Then his little mouth clamped shut and what I did manage to get in, got spat out at me.

When Boo had trouble taking medicine, we tried a special dummy which dispensed medicine when she sucked. G never had a dummy so this was out of the question.

The next dose I tried on a spoon thinking it would get it over with quicker but he just spat it out again.

Huster, thinking the refusal was to do with my bedside manner or something, tried himself, only for the spoon to be knocked out of his hand.

It seems the only way to get medicine into babies and toddlers (who are too young to be bribed) is deception.

I remember putting it in yoghurt with Boo but I always worry if it sinks to the bottom, and the child doesn’t eat all the yoghurt, you are back to square one. This would work if you were to feed the yoghurt yourself but Mr Independent hasn’t let me feed him since he was nine months old so that is a no-go here.

Then Hubster had, what I can only describe as a brainwave.

Both children love fruit of all kinds. That day, by pure coincidence, I had raspberries in. Hubster got the antibiotics in the syringe and squirted a bit into the pit-hole of the berry. G swallowed it and held his hand out for another.

We were dancing around with our parenting-win.

It may have cost me a fortune in raspberries during the course of antibiotics but at that point I didn’t care.

My boy got his medicine and his cough got better.

As a parent, that is all you want.

The answer to how you get medicine into your children then is deception. You just have to pick whichever food you think will work best for your child.