Autism-World

It has been a problem for most of the parents of children with autism or asperger’s syndrome that their children won’t take the medicine easily. Pills aren’t something that you could just give up, it’s such an important part in the treatment of autism. So, here’s some tips about how to get your kid to swallow pills.

The first thing to do is to analyse why your child won’t take the medicine. Is it that the pills are too smelly, like vitamin B-6? Is it that the pill is too big to be swallowed by a baby? Or, is it that your child is hypersensitive to taste? Is it physical or psychological?

This is what need to be determined in the first place if you are trying to solve the swallowing problem. And if the problem is due to physical properties, like the pills are too smelly or taste bad, here’s a common measure that you can try. If the pills are huge, crush them into powder, and mix it with the liquid that the kid loves most, for example, milk, juice, applesauce, icecream or anything that the child likes to drink. Besides, in this way, the small of the medicine will be covered. For most of the kids that’s not hyersensitive or with strong gag reflex, this will be successful. If the problem is mostly about the smell, then try this, suck on ice or popsicles before having pills, because cold dulls the tastebuds.

If this method cannot help, then you probably should attempt a product that called Pill Swallowing Cup. Since a kid with autism normally takes numerous medications, the cup may be helpful. Many families that have autstic individuals have tried this cup, and the feedback is sort of nice. A cup could help to get the liquid down more quickly with less yukky taste. You could start with small capsules, and when the child gets used to them, try larger capsules gradually.

When it get started, you can give a reward to the kid while he/she is doing well. She /he will do her/his best if she/he wants the benefits of the medicine. Or, you can ask a peer to come along and have a “race” to see who take the pills faster. And the faster one gets the reward.

All the above is about psysical problem, if it’s psychological, then psychriatric, or hypnotherapy treatment may be successful.

Hope this helped!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Parent Resources.