[Type1Mum]

Hi, my 12 year old (dx May 2006) is currently away on camp for 5 days. The teachers will be waking him at 11pm and 3am to get him to check his own BGLs. When do you think is a good age to start getting teenagers to start waking-up with an alarm clock and checking their own BGLs In two years' time he will be on a camp for 4 weeks (!!!!!), so I'd appreciate if anyone has had any experience with these sort of issues. Thanks!

[notme]

Hi Type1Mum, I think any time you can get a child to take some responsibility it is good. However, my teenagers (none of them with diabetes) could wake up in the middle of the night if they tried. Alarms, cowbells and fire trucks in their room would not wake them up. If you can get your son to wake up to an alarm, it might be a good thing to get started. Do some trial runs and see how it goes.

[sweetcheeks]

i dont have a diabetic kid, but from my personal experiences

i was getting up all by myself at the age of 9 with an alarm clock to get up and take my bath and to dress myself before school...

i think they should be able to handle getting up and checking there levels at that age as well... at least i would think so, i also think it would depend on the child and how well they are with other things

[Funnygrl]

Do you expect your child to test twice a night every night?

[Type1Mum]

Thanks for all your advice.

In response to Funnygrl, no - we generally only test him at 3am when he's been active during the day. He is really sporty, so especially during winter, when he plays two types of football every weekend, and trains for athletics and swims during the week, I'd feel more comfortable if an over-night check is done (he can drop a little low after all the activity). When he's on camp they are out and about all day hiking and kayaking etc. hence the necessity to test at 3am.

[right2fight]

I rely completely on my 12 year old to treat nighttime lows. He has been responsible in this area now for some time. After all, only he knows what he feels and does a bang up job. If he has problems, he wakes me. The sooner our children learn, the better it will be when they leave the nest.

[HollyB]

I'm in the same boat as notme. Aaron is really responsible with his diabetes but he sleeps like a dead man. Therefore isn't likely to wake up if he's low in the night, and isn't likely to wake up for an alarm clock either. I have had to really manhandle him to get him to wake up enough to eat, and this when he was in low-normal range (around 4.0) and just needed a safety cushion, not so low his brain was affected. I'm willing to check him when neeed for couple of years until he gets out of that "teenage sleep" thing but I do worry about school trips etc.

[Stuboy]

im 23 and i dont wake up with an alarm to test during the night... i've tried.... it just doesn't happen lol.

But I think 12 is a very reasonable age to start taking responsibility for it all... but then was dxd at 22 so maybe I just dont know anything!

[slipperyelm]

I really think it depends on the kid. Some kids can be super responsible and truly want to wake up, but ~biologically~ not be able to wake. If your kid can wake, good, have him do it. But as a parent, I think it is quite okay for you to make the sacrifice for him to get the uninterrupted sleep he needs as often as he needs it. You don't need to think of him as immature for his age or selfish or lazy if he cannot do his middle of the night checks just yet. Other kids, maybe they can. I really think this is a very individual thing.

Going to camp may be different. If he can't wake up and there are couselors who can and are willing to do his checks, fine. Even at 14 (two years from now), I think that would be okay. But I would keep letting him know that someday he should take the task on himself. I'm sure it would be really hard for him at first and you will probably also want to wake to make sure he really has woken. But eventually, I think that even the deep-sleeping pre-teen and teen body can learn to build into the sleep schedule a minute of wakefulness.

I think waking in the middle of the night is totally different than waking at the beginning of the school day and taking care of one's self. It could be very hard for him, so have compassion. And in those first weeks of waking middle-of-night, he make not be thinking clearly at all, he might make mistakes, so you might want to be up with him anyway.

[Eri's mom]

Eri doesn't wake herself up during the night to check, unless she wakes up feeling low(amazing how THAT's changed since she was younger!)...
Eri doesn't wake up to alarm clocks, the kid can sleep through them w/o budging.

[BriOnH]

Originally Posted by Type1Mum

...I'd feel more comfortable if an over-night check is done (he can drop a little low after all the activity). When he's on camp they are out and about all day hiking and kayaking etc. hence the necessity to test at 3am.

At the diabetic camp I worked at, for many summers, we would not test all the children in the middle of the night. At diabetic camp we were active ALL day. Especially on backpacking trips. The only kids that needed to be tested during the night were ones that were having problems with multiple hypoglycemic reactions.

[Funnygrl]

Yeah, every night seems a bit exceesive. Kids need their sleep, especially at camp!

[HollyB]

Aaron will actually come to me if he's feeling he'll need a check. Often it's when he's had a huge bedtime snack late and has a big wad of insulin on board -- its action can be a little unpredictable at night so it's a check to make sure he hasn't overbolused -- or if he's running way high we'll check to make sure it's coming down.

I do feel that this is a very big load for a kid to carry already. He deals with this from the minute he wakes up until he crashes out for the night. An occasional night check seems a small enough way to help out.

[right2fight]

Hi HollyB, You're absolutely right on when you say, "he deals with this from the minute he wakes up until he crashes out for the night." That's something that will not change, so my feeling is, the sooner our kids learn how to manage without us, the easier it may be for them to cope with this later on. Please don't get me wrong, I love my son very much and there is nothing I won't help with. I guess I feel by allowing him to manage by himself he will be so much more self sufficient. I always think, what if?, unfortunately we don't know what life has in store for us, so I aim to get him all the diabetic knowledge I can, just in case, I cannot be there for him.
Margaret

[xMenace]

I'd do it before 13. In my experience their brains turn to mush on their 13th birthday. They don't start returning to the land of the living until 16-18.