Sweet Talk for Parents of Kids with Type One Diabetes

For today’s episode, a mom came on to share how her 9-year-old son has become increasingly and newly worried anytime his CGM shows a high reading. We were able to trace this new anxiety to one particularly traumatic experience when he was over 400 for several hours and his parents (and grandparents) weren’t sure why he was high and were pretty anxious themselves. 

Together, mom and I understood that this kiddo probably picked up on the high energy of that one day which put him in an elevated state of alarm when he’s heading up. Through our conversation, we explored ways to help him lower his worry and ways to talk to him about it. 

Listen to the episode to hear more about:

• Making a protocol for when there’s a high so everyone knows what to do and we reduce the crisis response
• Offering tools to slow down anxiety, primarily through modeling and talking about the challenges
• Times and ways to validate our children’s experience, even as we want them to shift their perspective
• Talking through what might happen – including the idea of going to the hospital – to demystify a child’s fear of what that might mean
• Owning up to the ways that our reactions as adults might have impacted our kids.  

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

I’m so lucky this week to have Kaylor Glassman on the show. I know Kaylor through DYF, the organization that runs a diabetes camp in Northern California; she used to be the program director there. Now she has a business called Diabetes Support Partners, which is specifically designed to help families with a newly diagnosed child. 

The question we’re tackling is about T1D siblings and about how much diabetes support we parents can ask of them. The parent writing in has a newly diagnosed 6 year old and wants help with diabetes management from her 15-year-old daughter.  Is okay to ask for that support?  Kaylor and I look at some of the ways that it’s challenging for siblings, especially in the first year after diagnosis. We talk about how siblings’ feelings and needs often are overlooked and what a parent’s responsibility is to notice and take care of that non-T1D child, even as they are challenged by the very steep learning curve of type 1.

We also talk about:

• How to think about the care the sibling is providing — is it a regular gig or an occasional ask that’s part of the normal help that family members provide each other?  And if it’s a regular “job,” we talk about the advantages of paying a teen child for that help
• Ways to pay attention to a sibling’s experience and what the developmental needs are for a 15-year-old child
• How to balance a sibling’s needs while taking care of our T1D child in this first year
• The value of regular check-ins so the sibling’s needs are addressed
• Getting both practical and emotional support through connections in the diabetes community
• Helping a teen babysitter problem solve T1D issues that might come up
• Circumstances where you might not want to leave a sibling in charge

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

What a dilemma!  To stay or to go?  In this episode, I talked to a lovely mother who is debating whether she should move to live near her family who she knows can and will support her and her newly diagnosed daughter.  The sticking point is that she also loves her job, feeling like she won the “career lottery” – and she isn’t sure she wants to give that up.  Since her daughter is still in the first year after diagnosis, she came onto the podcast to better understand what will change with her relationship with diabetes.  Will it get easier?  And in what ways?  Ultimately, she wants to know if diabetes will ever feel easy enough that she doesn’t need to make the move.  But she also names how much she wants people to lean on who care about her daughter enough to learn about managing diabetes.  Along the way in this rich conversation, we explore the loneliness she feels and her understandable need to have people in her life who can support her more with the day-to-day of diabetes.

Listen to hear more about:

• The ways that things change with diabetes after the first year
• The loneliness and sense of isolation when living with diabetes
• The challenges of building a diabetes community
• How people turn inward after diagnosis and how to shift that over time to build connection
• The profound sense of relief you can have when a connection does happen around T1D

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

This week, I had a wonderful conversation with my old T1D mom friend, Tamar.  Tamar and I met at camp a million years ago and our children were diagnosed on the same day!  She’s a veteran, so you’ll hear a robust conversation about the question. A parent wrote in, saying that her son wants to eat “normally.”  Together, Tamar and I think about both how that’s possible — and why it’s vital to meet that need as best as the parent can (while still, of course, trying to keep blood sugars in range).  We discuss what anxiety might come up as a parent is trying to strike that balance, and how we parents sometimes may have difficulty containing that anxiety with our kids. 

Listen to hear us talk about:

• How restricting food can be subtle: It’s not just saying your child can’t eat a particular food but also by continually offering them the foods you know how to dose for easily
• How important it is to focus on emotional well-being, not just on blood sugars 
• How you can think about and hold the idea of the potential “consequences” of diabetes with your kids
• Why it’s better to stay “in the now” with diabetes management and not worry about what’s going to happen in the future
• How to find flexibility with management, and how to accommodate and adjust when things go off the rails     
• How to avoid becoming the “diabetes police” while still monitoring diabetes and keeping numbers in range
• How to validate your child’s experience with diabetes

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

What a complex issue!  This week, a mom came on the show, talking about how her somewhat-newly diagnosed 7-year-old has been pulling off her pump.  Mom has been working hard to stay calm in the face of all these pump “failures” but really wants to get at the root of the problem, so her daughter stops derailing her own treatment.  She’s thinking about the kinds of consequences she might need to dole out around treatment options because — understandably! — She’s worried and wants this to stop.

With this mom, instead of thinking about consequences, we redirect to thinking about what her daughter might be trying to communicate with this pump-pulling-off behavior.  Although we can’t know for sure, I’m guessing that her daughter is anxious and is trying to say something about how she feels.  Together we explore:

• How to speak frankly and honestly about the pump discomforts to uncover what’s going on deep down for her daughter.
• How to show empathy to our T1D kids when they are showing anxiety or resistance to their diabetes care.
• The hard and complicated dance of choice: how to allow the T1D kid independence over their diabetes management, and what is developmentally appropriate. Sometimes, a child may express interest in having more independence even though it could cause adverse effects, so we need to find balanced ways to give kids options while staying within bounds of what everyone (kid, parents and other caregivers included) can handle.

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

I had an interesting conversation this week with a mom of a T1D pre-schooler.  Because she’s managed to keep dosing pretty invisible and seamless for him thanks to tech, she’s worrying that he doesn’t understand that he needs insulin to eat. As we explored the issues of how she could introduce the idea to him about this, we also were able to better understand her very normal worries about what’s to come with diabetes.  She shared how diabetes made her feel less confident as a parent and the ways she worries about what the next steps are and how to prepare herself and her son for them.

We explore:

• How to share language around diabetes and food with a young child (including information about the free Sweet Talk Snack Course that can help you with these issues)
• How to practice with new foods that feel scary to dose for
• How to respond when you see those high blood sugars
• How to gradually introduce the idea of giving insulin in relation to food while taking into account what’s developmentally appropriate including the child’s ability to control impulses
• How to practice staying neutral when glucose levels are high and the importance of modeling this when numbers are out of range
• How to think about healthy food limits and introducing “trickier” foods
• What it’s like to be thinking through “the next big step” with diabetes
• Talking about dosing like it’s a science experiment
• How we can appropriately and responsively respond to our T1D kids

For more on creating a balance with eating for your T1D kids, check out Sweet Talk’s free Sweet Talk Snack Course.

Stay tuned for our next episode of the Sweet Talk podcast!  Like, subscribe, and share!

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

Sure, we want our kids to like their low supplies — after all, they sometimes need to eat them when they don’t want to eat a thing.  But we don’t want them to like them so much that they eat them for fun. That would equal a blood sugar disaster.  In this episode, T1D mom Julie comes to talk about just that:  Her four-year-old was high for several days in a row and she had no idea why until he showed her the wrappers for his low supplies that he had stashed under his hamper. 

We discussed:

• What to do when you feel like your child is lying or hiding, but then shares
• How your child might be struggling with control and how to strategically return some control, particularly over food choices
• How to talk to a child who has been eating their low supplies and how to understand their needs

Join me on Friday, Aug. 18 at 9 am PST / 12 pm EST for, “Beyond the 504,” a free Zoom workshop. We will discuss the toolkit you need to build a successful partnership with your T1D kid’s school. Sign up today!

Stay tuned for our next episode of the Sweet Talk podcast! Like, subscribe, and share!

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

Diabetes anniversaries!  If you go onto Facebook, you’ll see a lot of photos of kids with cakes celebrating this milestone.  But not everyone wants to take that on.  In fact, some people just feel like diabetes is a bummer, and not something they want to celebrate in any way.  In this episode, fellow T1D mom Annie and I discuss a question from a listener who wrote asking whether she should have a dia-anniversary celebration for her daughter’s first year with T1D.  It was clear that she was hesitant to celebrate.  

Listen to hear more about:

• The difference between a celebration and a “marking” of a child’s diabetes anniversary
• Creative ideas to make your own ritual or explore different kinds of “celebrations” beyond cake
• How the date-of-diagnosis anniversary could be a time to reflect on the past year and its successes, especially noticing the good work your child has done to stay healthy
• Being sensitive to the developmental needs of your children when it comes to dia-anniversaries 

Join me on Friday, Aug. 18 at 9 am PST / 12 pm EST for, “Beyond the 504,” a free Zoom workshop. We will discuss the toolkit you need to build a successful partnership with your T1D kid’s school. Sign up today!

Stay tuned for our next episode of the Sweet Talk podcast!  Like, subscribe, and share!

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

With diabetes, there’s the independence dance:  Sometimes our kids want to learn and grow into new tasks and responsibilities with their own self-care — and sometimes they’d rather hand it back to us.  What makes this particularly hard is the chatter in our own heads.  We parents worry when our kids take a step backward, thinking that we need to hold the line to ensure that our kids move only forward in their diabetes care.

In this week’s episode, I talk through this issue with Samantha, a mom who also happens to be a pediatric nurse.  In her day job, she is confident in helping kids through their shots.  What she found, though, is that as a mom of a newly diagnosed T1D kid, there were more challenges than she had imagined. Her daughter wanted to give shots herself but then got really fearful about how the shots hurt.  The result was that each long-acting insulin shot became a 45-minute event.  Unsure of what to do, Samantha wondered whether she should take back the responsibility for giving shots or insist that her daughter give them because she knows she can. Samantha and I talk about where that line around independence is when it comes to diabetes care.  We also discuss the worries and dynamics that come up around a T1D kid’s food choices – especially when they are trying to minimize their shots.

Join us to also hear about:

• How to follow your child’s lead in terms of taking on next steps in diabetes management and care
• What to consider when our kids don’t want a pump or diabetes technology but when we think it might be best
• Why the risk for eating disorders is higher in people with type 1 and how to set up your child for success in their relationship to food
• Supporting good food choices with a child who wants to eat fewer carbs to avoid a shot
• Different ideas for rituals that might help kids with getting shots

For more on creating a balance with eating for your T1D kids, check out Sweet Talk’s free Sweet Talk Snack Course.

Stay tuned for our next episode of the Sweet Talk podcast!  Like, subscribe, and share!

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com

We all remember what it was like when our T1D child was first diagnosed: The shock and sadness — and the steep, steep learning curve to trying to get diabetes “right.”  As we watched each reading and each bite of food, we worried about being away from our child, and we wanted that CGM as quickly as possible.  

In this episode, the mom of a newly diagnosed 8-year-old girl comes to talk about the dilemma she’s having about sending her daughter to an art camp — without a CGM.  Of course, she’s anxious.  Who wouldn’t be?  But she’s also sad about the idea of her daughter not going, her daughter’s disappointment, and her feeling of life not being normal.

We explore:

• Whether mom can commit to being at the camp for most of the day, rather than just keeping her daughter home with her.  While we know that can be a big burden on mom, it might help create a bridge to some normalcy.  
• What it would be like to get support from the camp and how mom might ask for that help.
• How her very shy daughter might react to all the attention that diabetes requires — and what that will be like for her going forward, into school and beyond.
• Choices that this mom can offer her daughter to make the transition back to camp and school easier, even with T1D

For more on creating a balance with eating for your T1D kids, check out Sweet Talk’s free Sweet Talk Snack Course.

Stay tuned for our next episode of the Sweet Talk podcast!  Like, subscribe, and share!

Mentioned in this episode:

Need help getting your kid the right snacks?

That's why I've created the Sweet Talk Snack Course. It's a free mini-course to give you 6 snack sized lessons on making sure you're giving your kid the right foods to keep them nourished and their blood sugar in check. Get it at https://diabetessweettalk.com