Helping your child take their medicine can be hard, especially if they’ve had a bad experience or don’t like the taste.
It’s important your child takes their prescribed medicines at the right time and dose to help them feel better sooner. If your child struggles to take their medicine, read our tips on how to make it easier for them.
Talking to your child about medicine
It’s important your child understands why they need to take their medicine. Make sure you talk with your child and explain what the medicine does and how it will help them.
You should also:
- be honest about the taste of medicine and don’t tell them it tastes good if it doesn’t
- tell your child they’re doing a good job each time they take their medicine
- set up a simple reward system like a sticker chart to help your child feel motivated
- give your child a choice when you can, such as letting them choose who gives them the medicine.
If your child gets stressed or worried when they take medicine, it can help if you take control and help them with it. This can help them feel less stressed.
You must always supervise your child when they are taking medicine.
Medicines that taste bad
Some medicines have a bad or bitter taste. This makes it harder for children to take them, especially if they are young. To help your child overcome bad tasting medicine there are different things you can try.
Use a dropper to put the medicine on the inside of your child’s cheek. This avoids the bitter taste buds at the back of the tongue.
For some medicines, you might be able to mask the flavour. Make sure you ask your pharmacist about how or if you can do this.
How to safely swallow tablets and capsules
One of the hardest parts of taking medicine can be swallowing tablets or capsules.
Children can usually start swallowing tablets safely from 2 years old. But each child learns this skill in their own time.
When you feel your child is ready to learn how to swallow tablets you can use a staged approach to help them learn. This involves getting your child to swallow small sized foods and slowly building up to tablet sized foods.
If you’re not sure if your child is ready to swallow tablets, talk to your GP, doctor or pharmacist.
Step 1 – Teach them how to actively swallow
If your child doesn’t understand how to swallow without chewing, teaching them how to do it safely is an important first step.
Take a spoonful of food or drink and show them how you swallow. Try to overact the motion of swallowing. Use your hands to show how food or drink travels from your mouth, down your throat to your stomach. You can also make ‘gulping’ sounds to help your child understand.
Open your mouth after you swallow to show them that the food or drink has gone. Children respond well to seeing that the food is ‘all gone!’.
Make sure you explain to your child that swallowing means not chewing the food.
Step 2 – Practice swallowing with lollies
The staged approach starts with teaching your child to swallow small lollies in thick foods.
Start with getting your child to practice swallowing thick food alone. You can use puree apple, yoghurt, custard or jam. Place a spoonful in their mouth and encourage them to do a big swallow.
Next, place a small lolly such as a hundred and thousand on a spoonful of the thick food. Your child can push the lolly into the puree to cover it.
The goal is to get your child to repeatedly swallow the small lolly in one go. This means at least 5 to 10 times in a row.
Once your child is able to do this, you can increase to the next lolly size. Repeat the method until you reach the desired tablet size.
Lolly sizes from smallest to largest
- Hundreds and thousands
- Sugar pearls used in cake decorating
- Half a sultana, mini M&M or Tic Tac
- Full sultana or Tic Tac
You can also use jelly snakes or jelly lollies which you can cut into any size.
Step 3: Switch to tablets
Once your child can consistently swallow lollies the size of a Tic Tac, swap the lollies for a prescribed medicine tablet.
Use the same swallowing skills they learned with lollies.
You should give your child lots of praise and tell them they’re doing a good job.
Step 4: Swallowing tablets with water
After some time taking tablets mixed with puree, you can teach your child to swallow tablets with water. This can be when they are a older toddler or starting school age.
Use the same teaching method as you did with the thick foods but with water. Start by swallowing a hundreds and thousand with water, and then move through the sizes until you reach Tic Tac size.
Teaching tips
- Keep the practice sessions fun and short, usually 10 to 15 minutes
- Use lots of praise
- Don’t pressure your child, children generally respond well to a low-pressure environment
- If your child finds the practice too hard, you can leave it and try again later
- Make sure your child is sitting upright and comfortably when taking their tablets