Has Your Diabetic Teen Stopped Testing?

Dealing with a diabetic child is not easy. Dealing with a diabetic teenager is worse. It is important to build a level of trust with your teen, yet also be aware of signs that may indicate your teen is not doing what they need to do in order to stay healthy.

Teenage years are crazy even at the best of times. Hormones, dating, driving, and educational pressures can make both a teen and their parents crazy. Add diabetes into the mix and you can expect to have some challenges. Your pre-teen, who has shown awesome responsibility in handling their diabetes, suddenly seems to be showing different habits, or you notice changes in their health that seem confusing.

Maybe your teen has stopped testing in front of you. They have started to lose weight, but the activities that they are in, such as soccer camp, would seem to explain the weight loss. Maybe your teen seems to be having a lot of lows, so you consider making adjustments to their insulin.

You receive the results of your teen's A1C test. Fear sets in because the numbers are dangerously high! The reason? Your teen has suddenly developed a second personality, one that refuses to follow the plan that has been working so well.

First, take a breath and get a hold of your emotions. You are going to feel extreme anger, fear, and hurt. Let your teen experience what you are feeling, but make sure that you are able to still communicate with your teen. Try to find out what the reason is. Is it the need to be like everyone else? Is it fear of your reaction to bad readings because you have accused them of over-indulging when they weren't? Are they are having trouble handling the pain from their tester?

What ever the reason, which you may not discover right away, is not important at the moment. Make sure that your teen is fully aware of the serious health consequences that can result from lack of care. Remind them about the things that they will not be able to do if they do not care of themselves. Scare them to death if you need to. This is not the time to baby them.

Look at your own behavior as well. Do you encourage healthy eating choices based on what you have in the house? Maybe you keep tempting snacks that cause issues with your teen's glucose levels. Try to eliminate them, even if you feel that you should be able to eat these things if you want. Remember how hard it is to resist things when on a diet. It is even harder for a teen, whose hormones can cause cravings.

Have you have let your teen skip bedtime readings, or they tell you that they have tested when they have not? Since there was never any problem before, why would you question them now? If you do question them, they make you feel guilty. So of course you trust them!

Once you have recovered from the shock of the blood test results, you need to come up with a plan. They will not be able to really perceive the consequences of their actions, because teens think in the now, and they think they are indestructible. You may find it necessary to take away things or ground them. That is something they will be able to understand.

Next, you need to sit down and discuss the new rules and come up with a plan that will help get their health back on track. They need to become responsible again for their health, since you cannot be with them every minute of the day. You also need to rebuild your trust in them. Remember that they may be considered an adult at eighteen, but that does not mean that they will handle their own care like an adult.

Start reducing their carb intake. Try to stay with fruits and veggies if looking for something sweet or crunchy. Make sure that your teen has some sort of protein before bed. The lower the carb intake, the better. If they are craving some sort of dessert, try to make it as healthy as possible, with as much fiber as possible. You can also sneak in additional fiber by adding products like Fiber-Sure. Fiber helps control the glucose levels.

After a while, most diabetics are able to determine their carb intake without actually measuring their food. At least for a while, it would be best to go back to measuring milk, fruit, number of chips, etc. It is important to keep the carb count as tight as possible.

Before, you trusted them to test out of your sight. Not any more! Insist that all testing be done in front of you. If you are not able to actually view the testing, have them leave the strip in the tester. Also If testing at school, it may be necessary for you to make arrangements for your teen to test in front of the nurse or other adult, not in the bathroom.

Make sure that you confiscate the test solution. Sometimes, teens will use this instead of blood. Of course, the give away is the fact that the color of the test solution is magenta.

If they are having trouble with the pain of testing, talk to their physician about alternate locations. Changing locations may require a different tester. It is worth it if your teen is more willing to test.

If you are not already doing this, make a log sheet to track the results, or if your tester comes with software, download the results into the computer. This reduces the chances of your teen fudging the numbers.

Have your child test for ketones before bed, especially of the reading is in the 200's. Of course, use whatever benchmark that is provided by your teen's doctor. Do not test first thing in the morning. Everyone will normally show ketones in their urine after not eating during the night, even if they are not diabetic.

If your teen is not in a school sport, make sure that they are exercising daily. Take a family walk after dinner, shoot some baskets, anything to get them moving. The more they exercise, the lower the readings.

Be prepared for your teen to be angry with you, mostly because they got caught. They may also be afraid, which can be good for a while. Once you and your teen get the readings in control, you will start to notice that the symptoms that seems out of place will disappear. Hopefully, by the time the next blood test results come in, you will see an improvement. Make sure that your teen does not get discouraged if they are not perfect yet. It takes time to lower the A1C results.

It is also important that you do not back down or slack off because you think your teen has had a change of heart. Fat chance! That is exactly what they are going to be counting on. You will have to be the "bad guy" for quite a while, so get used to it.

Hopefully you and your teen's doctor will have caught this temporary setback before too much damage has been done. Make sure that you check with your teen's doctor before making any kind of adjustments to your teen's insulin. If something doesn't seem right, go with your instincts and call the doctor. Diabetes is controllable, but you must constantly monitor your teen so that they can live a long and happy life.