Is your household diabetes friendly?

July 5, 2011  |  2 Comments

Being a person with diabetes (Type 1, dx 2003), I know first hand of how important it is to have a supportive family and an engaged professional team in order to even come close to mastering the diabetes beast. To be candid, I have taken these things for granted and figured everyone had a support team that was similar to mine.

Last night, I had an eye-opening conversation with a friend who is in her first year of residency at George Washington University. She told me that this type of supportive family environment is not always the case.

The children that she saw (ages 5 – 13) with Type 1 diabetes had an average glucose number of around 250 mg/dL. I was astonished.

I asked her why she thought the blood sugars were so high and her answer was that it had a lot to do with the parents not (1) educating themselves about Type 1 diabetes (“But orange juice is healthy for growing kids,” one mother said) and (2) refusing to make household changes for the sake of the Type 1 child (“The whole family likes ice cream and I’m simply not going to remove it even though Chris often indulges too much,” said another mother.)

Parents: What have you done to educate yourself on diabetes? What are some simple steps other families can take to help their child with diabetes?

Filed under: Children with diabetes Parents of Type 1 Type 1 Diabetes   |  Tagged with:  health