Refusing medicine

[Lauren2103]

My 14 month old has been prescribed liquid penicillin for possible scarlet fever which needs to be taken 4 times a day for 10 days.
He absolutely hates having medicine, won’t even take calpol he just fights us so much and ends up hysterical.

How can I get him to take it without the need to hold him down as this is obviously extremely upsetting for him, aswell as me having to see him get like that. Tried squirting into his cheek, hiding it in certain things, tried it on a syringe and a spoon and he still spits out or refuses completely and now I don’t know what else I can do.

Obviously he’s too young to attempt to reason with him as he just doesn’t understand what medicine is. Anything I can do to help as we’re only on day 3 of 10 and I don’t think I can mentally put us both through holding him down anymore for that length of time as he really does just become hysterical and I worry it’ll traumatise him and lead to anxiety over medicine in the future but we need to get medicine in him somehow😭

Thanks

We had a funny dummy that you put the meds in and bobbed it in - he never realised as it was straight to the back of the mouth. Once my DS was older he used to be allowed ‘coke’ when he was ill, it wasn’t allowed any other time and he used to drink it down quickly with a straw - the first time he had neat coke with no meds in he couldn’t understand why it tasted different 🤣