3 year old will not take calpol no matter how many ways I try! - Help please!

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My son has a temperature, has been since yesterday afternoon. Has been very up and down, one minute it will be average then in will spike up to 37.8 being the highest so far. He has a very chesty cough as well and bringing up a lot of mucus.

It is always a fight to get him to take calpol no matter how many ways I try…. I’ve tried it in milk, in yogurt, from a spoon, from a syringe , showed him giving it to his baby sister (6 months old) when she was ill a few weeks back to make him see it’s nothing to be scared of, showed him myself having calpol, it’s always resulted in pinning him down but that isn’t an option this time round, he screams if I pin him down, which makes him cough lots which then results on him choking/ gagging on the calpol and just brings it back up anyway.

he is drinking water, not eating, sleeping lots and getting plenty of rest but I feel the calpol will help massively and I just don’t know what to do!

any ideas please??!!! Thank you x

Mine never would! I just let them get on with it.

Same as giving medicine to a cat
Two man job, tilt the head back and hold the mouth closed by the chin (obviously make sure he can breathe through his nose)
And big rewards for when he does it without any silly nonsense

Pharmacies do own brand paracetamol suspension in different flavours. We mix a cherry one with some super cold fizzy vimto and it hides it well.

You can get paracetamol suppositories Paralink in Ireland too. A life saver for a high fever. Wouldn’t be too bothered at under 38 degrees though.

My DS was like this - I used to buy disprol junior and dissolve it in juice. Maybe that could be in option

We used suppositories as well. DS threw up Calpol and nurofen until he was about 5. Meant we only used them if he had a very high temp.

uk hospitals used to give us suppositories. but once my son was turning blue when his temp was over 40 and I could not get calpol in him. Hospital showed me how to put my crouched legs either side of his head, bum over his chest (not touching him) and the action of an adult over him made him concede and I was able to squirt a sringe down the side of his mouth. Sounds terrible but he was not hurt or uncomfortable.

have you tried a medicine dummy? It works like a syringe but is a lot less traumatic. It was the only thing that worked for my ds.

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Sorry if suggested already, on a spoon with cake sprinkles worked for us

My DD has ASD and truly hated liquid medication. Her father and I both have to take a fair number of pills so she was very familiar with the concept. She was highly motivated to learn and practiced with tiny candies.

In our country they sell miniature versions of M&ms which are chocolate with a hard candy shell. She practiced for about a week and mastered the skill.

them the hard part was convincing the doctor and pharmacist that yes, we wanted pills, even if I have to cut them up.

A temperature needs to be higher than that to medicate, unless there are separate signs of pain. If a child won’t take oral medication then I’d look at suppositories.

If he isn’t in pain or properly ill, a real struggle to get him to take calpol is worse than him not having calpol.