DD won't take her antibiotics

[PickledLily]

Massive anxiety about being sick. She won't take the liquid medicine it makes her gag. Won't take the pills as they are (to be fair) huge. They are capsules so I can't split them.

What the hell do I do?

Can it be mixed in with anything?

I was exactly the same as a child the texture made me retch

Can you use the calpol style childrens syringes so she can swallow immediately and then put something 'crunchy' like a biscuit into her mouth? That's what used to help me!

Can you open the capsules and sprinkle in a spoon of yoghurt or smoothie!

How old is she?

I've had success mixing liquid medicines in with chocolate milk, or for a really nasty one, melted chocolate?

How old is she? Presumably not little if she's been given tablets rather than medicine. If she can't swallow the pills can the powder inside be mixed with something? Untimately if she doesn't take them and gets worse she could end up needing intravenously on a drip, I'd be making her aware of this in age appropriate way.

She's 10. It is really nasty bitter tasting antibiotics. She won't go near the spoon now that's she has tasted it. I tried emptying out the capsule and mixing with Nutella but it made her gag. Any attempt sends her into an anxiety fuelled meltdown.
We are going to try swallowing the whole capsule with some rice pudding/jam later, once she's calmed down, and we will see how that goes.

Could you try buying some tictacs and get her to practice swallowing them?

The liquid is disgusting. Dd wouldn't take it when she was tiny. GP gave me splittable pills instead. Ask for some.

Unfortunately if I her tell she will end up in hospital it will just make her anxiety worse as it increases the pressure/demand and she can't cope with that.

By splittable I mean normal tablets which can be crushed and divided.

I suspect your dd will do better with putting the crushed/split pills in one spoonful of jam or whatever and getting it over with - one big swallow - and then give her a treat or something nice to taje the taste away, rather than a few smaller spoonfuls. I gave dd a spoonful of honey after hers, but she was less than 3 and didn't get much sugar. When she was older she'd seen me swallowing so many pills (ms) that she thought it made her just like me if she got pills! Very grown up

Great idea to practice with tictacs, thank you!
We got liquid initially as the GP didn't know and couldn't request what size tablets they would give us. I don't think they would be able to give me smaller tablets, it's been difficult enough to get another prescription as it is.
She's normally unfazed by disgusting medicine so it must be really grim.

Taste it. It is truly vile. When I was trying force-feed it to dd at age 1ish I thought I'd give it a go as she was so determined not to have it. I wouldn't touch it either! Goodness knows why they think it'll help kids take it, I've not met one for whom it wasn't a massive problem.

Ask the GP to switch them. DD is 17 and had flucloxacillin capsules to take a few months ago, the taste and even the smell alone was so bad it made her gag and she just couldn’t do it. It was genuinely repulsive, they smelled of cat pee.

Try a combination of these:
Give her an ice cube or peppermint to suck beforehand.

Let her hold her nose as she swallows. Most of what we perceive as taste is actually smell.

Get her to tip her chin down towards her neck, not up. This will make swallowing easier.

With the jam or Nutella, get her to put the tablet in her mouth on a spoon with a similar amount as the volume of the tablet, then follow it immediately with a second teaspoon of just the food and aim to swallow that.

Try mixing the contents of the capsule with icing sugar and a bit of water to make a paste.

Ask for the tablets/capsules. I remember going through this when my DD were a similar age