Handing Over Care to Your Child

For the first years, you do everything. By adulthood, your child does everything. The handover happens across the years between, and doing it gradually works far better than doing it suddenly.

A rough sense of the stages:

• Toddler and preschool: your child watches, holds things, and learns that this is a normal part of the day rather than a punishment.
• Early school years: they can start recognising and reporting how they feel, and can begin doing checks with you supervising.
• Later childhood: they can do their own checks reliably, know what a low feels like, and understand why the treatment exists.
• Early teens: they take on doses under supervision, and start attending part of the clinic appointment without you.
• Later teens: they manage day to day, carry their own supplies, and know their diagnosis, medicines and history well enough to explain them.

Two things go wrong most often. Handing over too much too early, so a child carries responsibility they cannot yet manage. And handing over too little for too long, so a teenager reaches adult care with no practice at all.

Adolescence is usually the hardest stretch. Teenagers reasonably want to be like everyone else, and diabetes gets in the way of that. Expect some rebellion against the routine, and treat it as normal rather than as failure. Staying connected matters more than perfect readings during those years.

One thing to hand over deliberately: the story. Your child should grow up knowing their diagnosis was genetic, when it was made, what the report said, and where it is kept.