How can I make toddlers antibiotics taste better?

[suspiciousofgoldfish]

DS (2) has been prescribed a course of oral antibiotics (penicillin) for 10 days. Have to give them 4x per day and it tastes revolting.

He understandably balked at the first dose and refused anymore, so I mixed it with yogurt. He had one mouthful and then said no more.

I tasted it and the flavour is so strong it wasn't masked at all by the fromage frais. Husband ended up getting him to take the medicine but it didn't sound fun

How can I make it taste better? I don't want to add anything that may affect the medicine..... Any ideas?

TIA

Mix into dilute juice

Mix into homemade jelly

Freeze into home made lollies (made with fresh orange or similar)

Revolting isn't it? Why they haven't made a more neutral flavoured one yet baffles me!

Nesquick (pink milk)
Ice cream
Custard
Chocolate pudding/mousse

Or good old fashioned bribery? A handful of buttons for every swallowed mouthful?

Good luck!

My 3 year old refuses juice, lollies, jelly, yoghurt. Anything fruit flavoured. We ended up bribing with lots of chocolate/toys/ treats for each dose (4x daily x 10 days!) and resorted to wrapping her in a towel, laying her on the floor, holding nose and trying to syringe it into the part of the check where it avoids the tongue so minimised tasting it. By day 6 she was resigned to the inevitable and just took the stuff with a chocolate chaser.

In the US you can choose flavours eg chocolate. I would happily pay for this over here but not an option. These Meds really do taste terrible.

Good luck.

We made a syrup with sugar and vanilla essence and mixed the antibiotics into that when we had some particularly nasty tasting antibiotics prescribed.

We had the same a few weeks ago. I bought a pack of chocolate buttons and said I knew it was gross, but if she took it she could have a couple each time- worked well.

Wow that was quick thanks all.

Just about to give dose 2 so will mix with a bit of juice.

It just tastes so strong! I was debating trying ribena (!) but the thought of him having all that sugar four times a day put me off.

You'd think in this day and age they would make them taste better...

Lollipop to lick straight after?

Mix it with apple sauce

I used to cajole ours that if they had the medicine they got a haribo type sweetie straight after - they had to hold the sweet though!

My friend was a formulation scientist and she says there's not much can be done to take the bitterness away from ABs - penicillin has nothing on flucoxacillin, that is vile

Chocolate bribery here from about the age of 18 months xx

Oops, forgot where I was there and put 'xx' at the end of my post. Sorry everyone!

My cat got a ten day course of ABS given in one injection.

Why they can't do that for human I'll never know.

Juice was a no-go, he took one sip and more or less said "on yer bike mummy".

It is that Flucoxacillin stuff actually, not penicillin.

DH wrestled him again. I couldn't even watch, I don't think I'll be able to do it when husband isn't here. (I'm no match for my two year old).

Going to try ice cream tomorrow.

DS is getting wise already - I asked him if he wanted a yogurt (this time with no medicine in) and he sniffed it first

If all else fails I'll have to get the name of your vet Napqueen.

DD has just had a course of that and after a couple of really bad screaming sessions we discovered that bigging up the disgusting taste worked e.g 'ewww it's time for the horrible medicine, quick get some water to wash it down' etc. She's just had her last dose and proudly announced that it tastes like 'a monkey bum'. It worked for us but then DD is a weirdo

I've had his problem before. Just could not get them down him, had to mix 1ml at a time into tiny bits of strong juice, then he got wise so ended up at the doctors for different antibiotics!

We have to get quite a lot of grim tasting meds into our 19 week preemie twins on a daily basis. We could syringe them into their mouths, but most of it ends up back out.

I now drop a breastfeed in favour of a bottle of EBM with the meds mixed in at teatime. It's been a bit hit and miss as to the amount, but I think I've nailed it to 50ml each. Enough to disguise the taste but not too much to drink in one go

Make sure its really cold, so put in the salad drawer, it does take a wee bit of the minging taste away.

Will he take calpol? You could try putting the AB into a syringe, and then front-loading the syringe with calpol so that's what it tastes of first.

I mixed some.does with icing sugar and chocolate sauce and pretended it was a special treat, do t let dad see you eat it all up etc. Other doses were I know it horrible but you have to have it and he just necked it (I'm fearful of vodka when he is a teen!), others were mixed in juice. I had to alternate to.stop.him refusing too often.

Jam, equal parts to the medicine.

We used to use the concentrated milkshake mix, can't remember what it's called (DC now 21 and 14). And stand in the kitchen with me saying to Dh in a very loud voice 'no daddy don't drink that, that's the special one I'm saving for X, it's the good stuff'

Um bongo. We told dd that if she drank her special juice she didn't have to take the medicine.

I'm going to try all of these.

Impressive skills Quad, the mistress of sleuth, I will be using that sneaky tactic too.

Thanks for your tips everyone.

Pen V is by far the worst tasting. What strength is it? I usually give the stronger strength so it's a smaller amount. The problem with mixing it into anything is you need to make sure that they then eat/drink all of it