Children with Diabetes: How to help them cope at school?

If you have children with diabetes, the first thing to do is inform the principal and teachers of your child's diabetic condition. The teachers should then spend some time to disseminate information about diabetes to the class. This will help prepare everyone that the child with diabetes comes in touch with at school, to respond quickly and provide any necessary support.

Children with diabetes have the same aspirations and dreams as other children. It is important that they be treated in just the same way. Whenever they request to have a drink, have some food or to visit the washroom, they should be taken seriously. Those are calls from their body telling them to do what’s necessary to keep them healthy. A diabetic child should also be able to communicate freely with others, be it at home or in school.

Classmates should be informed about the child’s diabetic condition in a way that the class would treat him or her just like them. The class should be educated of any possible diabetic emergencies so that they would be able to react accordingly.

So how would you portray the child’s diabetic conditions to the class and what do you tell them? One of the ways is to ask a family member to provide information to the class and tell them what diabetes actually is. The family member should be prepared to answer questions as children are naturally inquisitive and would want honest and truthful answers to their enquiries.

The information provided should be told in such a way that they would be able to comprehend. For example, presentations in the form of cartoons or pictorial diagrams would help them understand what they are being told about diabetes more easily.

Inform them what diabetes is and how it affects the body and also that the diabetic child needs to take shots to control the disease. Tell them about maintaining blood sugar levels, the importance of it and how it affects the brain and the nervous system. Showing how insulin works in the body might be an important part of the presentation.

Explaining how chemical changes that take place in the body, causing the blood sugar level to become low and its effects would help the class understand more about the diabetic child’s condition. Signs and symptoms of low blood sugar are that the diabetic child might become irate easily, become temperamental, have headaches, fall asleep unexpectedly or become confused over simple things.

Diabetic children might sometimes be having so much fun and become engrossed with what they are doing and not notice that they have signs of low blood sugar. It is important for diabetic children to refrain from taking simple sugars. Although that might be the case, eating sugar cubes or drinking a fruit juice would help to raise their sugar levels back to the norm.

The other children should also know that when children with diabetes react to the chemical changes in their bodies, they might act shaky, start perspiring and look pale. When the diabetic child is taking a test or examination, their blood sugar level might drop and those signs and symptoms might show, requiring them to have some snacks to keep their blood sugar at the norm and not let it drop too low.

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