Just a Spoonful of Sugar...

Remember how cool that Mary Poppins lady was? Snapping her fingers to clean up everything, Fitting all her belongings into ONE bag, chalk inspired adventures. But maybe the MOST miraculous of all her tricks was giving the kids medicine. Just HOW did she do that?

I have had a lot of opportunity over the last 14 years, and especially the last few months, to figure out just the best ways to get medicine down a child’s throat. And you know what? It is NOTHING like Ms. Poppins. In fact, I am beginning to think she is a fraud…

Here are some of my very UN-Poppin like methods.

Eye drops. It is horrible to give these things to any aged kid. In fact, I am pretty sure it was invented by some crazy Howie Mandell type mad-scientist that just wanted to make mothers insane. My MIL gave me this idea for giving them to babies and it seemed to work. Although I worry Child Protective Services will be knocking on my door later… Sit on the floor with the baby on his back between your legs with his/her legs facing your body. Hold baby’s head with your feet (preferably they will be clean) that frees up your hands -- one to hold the flailing arms, one to deliver the drops. I never felt so mean – but hey, pink eye disappeared!

Eye drops for older kids is very similar to that of younger kids – except I don’t hold them with my feet (mostly because their feet can now reach my head) But I have to fight off their hands just the same.

For oral medicine, if you are nursing, wait until feeding time to administer medicine. While feeding the baby, slip a syringe medicine dropper between your (hmm, hmm) and the baby’s mouth. Slowly (cuz you have to be sneaky) drop the medicine into the baby’s mouth one drop at a time with each swallow he/she takes. (you might get a little sticky, but hey, your babe doesn’t know what hit them) Of course, this only works for so long, unless you are like my mom who nursed her babies until they were 3 – but then I suspect if that was your thing, you probably wouldn’t be the medicine-giving type. (no offense meant to anyone)

If you are giving your baby oral meds, definitely do a syringe. And, if they are anything like mine, they will spit it O.U.T. , leaving you wondering how much they actually swallowed. So, you have to trick them. You aim the syringe at the inside of their cheek, towards the back of the jaw. Then let it out slowly. They can’t spit it out, but oh boy, do they ever get mad!!! If you just drip it towards the back of their throat and not to the side, they will either choke or spit it out… neither is a good option.

We have told B that she was drinking Princess Juice (not the juice FROM a princess (cuz that would be gross), just juice that would help her grow into one) The boys we told they would grow muscles… I think they really think they did. They would strut their stuff around and we would OOH and AAAHHH over their muscles they had grown with only one dose of meds… I am pretty sure this can lead to serious issues later, but later isn’t here, so for now – dream on kiddo!

We have awarded one popsicle for every dose of medicine. I DON’T recommend this. Not only is it sticky, but soon your child will eat ALL the popsicles in advance. Talk about a “buy now, pay later” attitude. Problem is, he doesn’t want to take his medicine if there are no popsicles. Which there aren’t, because they are all sloshing around in the bottom of his stomach.

We have chased the kids around the house and played airplane. I think the kids like seeing mom and dad do this, but I don’t really like it so much. I get tired. And the game isn’t really that fun when the sticky goo drips all over you.

We have pretended we are sharing the medicine. Each of us pretending to taste it (Mmmm, Mommy some. Mmmm, Daddy some. Mmmm, brother some.) Works well for little ones, not so much for the big kids. In fact, they look at us funny.

For the “swallow whole” kind (pills) it’s all about bribery. And psyching the kid out to realize the pill in his mouth is really MUCH smaller than the piece of pizza he just swallowed. We don’t have so much luck with this one. Even though my children are exceptionally smart – they can’t seem to comprehend that swallowing a pill is much easier than swallowing food. Most of the time, the child is convinced the pill is lodged in their throat and growing larger by the moment.

For the older kids, we turn their bottles upside down at night. If they are right side up in the morning, we know they took the medicine. Except when they take the time to flip the bottle and NOT take the medicine. Hmmm, maybe that’s why J isn’t getting better.

And I don’t care what people say about generics being the same as brand names… maybe the medicine is the same but brand name medicine tastes WAY better. And whatever Mary Poppins had in her bottle definitely wasn’t generic – actually it may not have been legal.

So what are your tricks?