To expect childrens medicines not to taste FOUL!!!!!

[lucyellensmum]

HOW am i supposed to medicate my two year old with medication that tastes toe curinglingly disgusting? I don't think i could swallow it (calpol night!) let alone force her to take it. So now, i have tried to dose her (she has runny nose so i wanted the anti histamine, also i NEED some sleep) but i don't think she even got a quarter of the dose. Her temperature is HIGH, so now i have to worry about it not coming down . I normally use calpol packed full of sugar - its not like she has it every day, she likes that. But this stuff OH MY GOD - DP was hopping around the room (well yoiu know what men are like) after trying some, purely revolting. I clearly wont be buying THAT again. Trouble is, she hates all of them, poor wee thing, is there any wonder!

[kayzr]

YANBU
Its bad enough our medicine tastes bad let alone our childrens!!

[fingerwoman]

medised has anti histamine in as well.
or you could give ordinary calpol and piriton.

they all taste lovely to me lol

[Reallytired]

My son loves calpol. I agree that medised is foul tasting. You can't even mask the taste with ribena.

My son once had a really serious ear infection and had antibiotics prescribed by an ENT consultant. I had to physically pin him down to make him take it. Its one of the worst things that I have never had to do as parent.

[ravenAK]

One thing you could try, if your dd has an older sibling, is wait till they both get the same lurgy at the same time & get the older one to have the medicine first?

Ds did a fabulous job of curing dd's Calpol phobia - she clearly trusts him more than me!

[lucyellensmum]

Only got the bloody calpol because she hates the medised, but this stuff tasted even worse. Didnt know you could use piriton, but of course it is the same thing.

[nametaken]

what about mixing it in with some jam or honey - would she take it then. Mine do.

[lucyellensmum]

I have thought about that - i might try it tonight, i didnt think people still did that, you know, i thought they would be frightened of being put in prison for giving their children, OMG - SUGAR! LEM rushes out to buy some chocolate spread

[teakettle]

unfortunatly the drugs taste disgusting so are really hard to mask. Also it is almost impossible to market medicine with sugar in it due to the believe that sugar is inherently evil. The drug companies aren't going to try and change consmers minds about this as sweeteners are much, much cheaper. The price of suppositories here is outragous. There are techniques for taste masking but they are prohibitivly expensive for childrens cold and flu medicines. Sometimes ibuprofen is easier to force in as the dose is smaller but its not always the appropriate drug.

[Niecie]

My boys like Calpol but I have given up trying to get them to take antibiotics in liquid form they refuse point blank to take it - DS1 to the point of throwing it back up again. I have to hid tablets in Haribo to get him to take it. It happens so rarely that it isn't a big deal to let them have it this way. I have tasted them and they are toe curlingly bad! I couldn't take them.

We have Benylin Coughs and Colds for nighttimes. Seems to knock my two out as well as help their cold symptoms. Only problem is that it lasts 6 to 8 hours so you might have to get up once in the night to give another dose but better than being up all night. They don't seem to mind the taste and they are FUSSY!

[Playmobil]

have you tried a syringe, we have to give medicine daily and use a syringe from the pharmacist to give ds2 a quick squirt when hes distracted by tv and follow quickly with a choccie button

[lucyellensmum]

tried a syringe for the calpol night, but had to give 10ml (two x 5ml) and DD just spat the whole lot back out. Waste of £5 that was!!! Of course, we had no sleep again last night. But have managed to calpol and ibruprofen in. They still do calpol with sugar added so why not calpol night for all of us terrible mothers who's last priority when our children are sick and we are desperate for a nights sleep (actually more important for child to have a restful night without runny nose imo) is a bit of fecking sugar!

[newyearnightmare]

My 2.5 yr old ds has just been through this - scary high temperature and blocked nose. He also hates taking medicine.

We've found that using the tixylix night cough mixture isn't too bad - helps with congestion and sleeping. And you can also take it with the junior neurofen, which seems to be best at bring the temperature down quickly.

The junior neurofen also comes with a syringe that seems to be the best tolerated by ds - it has a flat end with a hole in rather than the little sharp nozzle that the ones the chemist sells seem to come with.

We also found that when neurofen wasn't working by itself in bringing the temperature down, adding a dose of calpol also helped. I hasten to add that I had checked in advance that it was possible to take these three medicines together safely!

Finally, made sure we had a sheet of stickers, a choclate and some nice tasting juice to hand so there was something to look forward to afterwards and to take the taste away.

Also if there is a favourite doll/toy that could take medicine - if there is a spare syringe (not sure if this is what you were referring to costing £5 - if you get them from the pharmacist they will either give them to you free with a child's prescription for medicine or if you are just buying one from them, they usually cost about 50p-£1 depending on size). Role playing through first with the dc giving the medicine to the toy (and giving the toy a sticker and some chocolate etc) seems to work quite well.

Must admit though - haven't ever been brave enough to try tasting these myself . Adult medicines taste bad enough, always seemed strange; if you are poorly (big or small!) you really don't want to have to taste something stomach-clenchingly disgusting.

good luck!

[MeMySonAndI]

OMG is this the sugar free Calpol??? I knew I shouldn't get it! (just got a bottle today)