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How do you teach someone to take tablets?

28 replies

Picturesinthefirelight · 12/05/2014 19:41

I've just discovered tonight that almost 13 year old dd can not take a tablet.

Tried practising with raisins, just about managed to get one down.

I think we must be mollycoddling kids these days with liquid antihistamines, fast melts etc.

I was taking tablets much younger than her. Surely as she gets older she's going to have to learn.

OP posts:
LegoClone · 12/05/2014 20:23

X posts with ALife! Grin

Beastofburden · 12/05/2014 20:26

I find most children can magically take tablets once they find out about suppositories. .

But DS2 can't as his disability prevents it. I dissolve things in sports drinks and give him the bottle to suck.

Cinnamoncookie · 12/05/2014 20:31

It took me months to teach myself to swallow tablets in my 20s, and even now, I have to break glucosamine in half and cannot swallow the big cod liver oil capsules. I had a lot of ear infections as a kid and had to have the tablets crushed up in a spoonful of jam - yuck !

Some people have real trouble with swallowing tablets, and for my part, I don't feel that telling children to 'Get over it' or 'Of course you can' is very helpful.

I started teaching myself using sherbert pips (remember those ?) as they are quite small and it doesn't matter if you crunch one and start again. What a pp said about filling your mouth with water and then gently squeezing the tablet into your mouth also works for me, as does tipping my head back a little.

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