Watch over me

Why do some parents leave medicating completely up to their children? What makes a grown adult think that a child should be left alone to medicate themselves?

I have read so many posts lately where parents are upset that their ADHD offspring are being disruptive in school or displaying poor behaviour and in the same paragraph mention how their child didn’t want to take their medication that morning or they gave the child their meds and left the room hoping that they would take them.

It’s a prescription drug and leaving that responsibility in the hands of a child is in my opinion irresponsible.

Parents will place their child’s medication in their hand and then leave the room. I know of a parent that found a stockpile of their child’s meds under their mattress. That parent had been giving the tablet to their child and then leaving the room assuming that the tablet had been taken.

I don’t leave anything to chance and will stay and watch Leni swallow his tablets and I do this for two reasons, one to make sure he takes it and two to ensure he doesn’t choke on them.

Isn’t it my duty of care as his parent to make sure he is medicated for school, not his?

There are so many children who are refusing to take their medication and I am struggling to understand why that is. Is there a stigma associated with medication and they are pushing back or do they dislike the way it makes them feel? This is something that needs to be explored because there are many children that could be doing so much better in school if they were taking their meds regularly.

Don’t trust your child to take the medication on their own. Stay with them to make sure they take it and if they refuse we need to have open and honest conversations with them about why they no longer want to take it. Have they outgrown it and it is no longer effective or are they embarrassed or tired of their diagnosis.

Leni has said to me that he doesn’t want to take his medication anymore and we were able to establish that for him it had more to do with being fatigued by the routine of it all which I can completely understand.

We talked about the pros and cons and I explained what was likely to happen if he didn’t continue to take his medication and it was Leni that agreed it was best to keep taking them.

I’m sure we may get to a point where we will again have that discussion but until then we have a duty of care as his parents to make sure he is taking his medication and doing so responsibly.

We need to stay with our children whilst they take their tablets and let them know how proud we are of them for being such responsible little humans. Watching over them is our responsibility not theirs.