How do you get children to take medicines?

[NaughtyNigel]

HELP>
DD2 will not take anything and hasn't for years. She is 10 and driving me to distraction.
she now has the dreaded threadworms and i won't let them go untreated.
She cannot swallow tablets. we've been practicing with chocolate beans. she really can't do it.
she vomits after liquid meds. hasn't been able to take calopl for years. won't take anything that's been suggested by dr (such as movicol, brufen, calpol etc). just tastes and gags. I've tried mixing with jam, honey etc. tried syringing. she just pukes it back up.
I really don't know what else to try.
your suggestions please?

can you put liquid medicine into fruit juice or squash? or milk shake?

what foods will she eat? i'm thinking if there are strong tasting foods such as very rich bolognese or something maybe it would disguise the taste of the medicine.

does she know you are mixing in the medicine? maybe if you could do it without her noticing its in there she'd be better.

shaken up really well in a drink?

Perhaps she has got the thought into her head that she can't take medicine so she sicks it back up, sort of psychosomatically?

Try putting it in a drink, don't tell her it's there, see what happens...

Brute force and ignorance.

Threadworm tablets are chewable not swallowable, in any case.

Tell her she has to take it, she can have a sweet of her choice afterwards to take the taste away. There's no such thing as not being able to take tablets -- if she had a life-threatening disease, would you just say to the medics, 'oh she can't take this medication, she can't swallow it?' I doubt it, somehow.

Just give her no option. It's a tiny tablet. She's being a wuss.

Sorry if this isn't what you want to hear, but I've heard so many parents in hospital waiting rooms saying, "Oh, I just can't get her to wear her glasses/eyepatch whatever". Dd1 was significantly not keen on her eyepatch, largely because she couldn't see anything with it on as she had virtually no vision in her other eye. Because she wasn't given the option to refuse, she had to get on with it, and now has reasonable vision in her weaker eye. Same principle as insulin injections for diabetic kids -- they don't have to like it, they just have to put up with it.

think it is partly psychological which is why i tried the smarties, thought i was being really cleaver. didn't work.
also rather unfortunately she doesn't do food or drink much. only drinks water and eats rubbishly. may try hiding it in her tea. do you know if that will matter? and how you'd hide worm liquid in chicken? or chips? or a sandwich. or would crushing a tablet work better?

I bribe mine - take your medicine and you get a piece of chocolate simple as that

All stems from a Dr when DS was little saying I had to hold him and down and get the antibiotics into him at all costs for something or other I forget now and he was PFB

So I tried it for about 10 seconds and we were both in tears and he didn't take any and got better, but never again.....

So chocolate all the way in the BMS house

sandwich... will she eat tuna mayo sandwich? you could try mixing the liquid into the tuna... or crushing a tablet into it for that matter.

agree... dont tell her its in there.

yes i know she's being a wuss. drives me nuts. thankfully shge's never needed anything for a serious illness but i really don't think she'd ever take anything short of being unconscious.
and i used to be of the same opinion. give the little sod child no choice in the matter. reason with it. tell her she is taking it end of story. until DD grew a mind of her own.
and she won't chew things either.

At that age I think you have to go for mixing it into food and not telling her.

With DS1 we used to have to sit on him to hold him down. He now thinks he's really important if he has medicne and tells me most nights that he's poorly so that he can have some medicine (which unbeknown to him is liquid vitamin syrup)

But he's only three so that's not very helpful I know