Tips on How to Get Your Child to Take Pills and Oral Medications

Crush and Mix

• Crush the pill or tablet, and place it in a small amount of food or juice that your child likes.
• Make sure your child eats or drinks all of the food or juice in which the pill or tablet is mixed.
• Be prepared to change mixtures if your child refuses to eat or drink the latest concoction that previously worked.
• Check with your physician or pharmacist to make sure pills or tablets can be crushed.

1. Ice Cream and Chocolate

• Crush the pill or tablet and place it in vanilla ice cream.
• Try sprinkling crushed pill or tablet on ice cream and cover it with chocolate syrup.
• Crush the pill or tablet and mix it with Hersheys syrup.

2. Candy and Sugar

• Melt a Starburst fruit chew in the microwave just enough to soften it and place the crumbled pill in it and make into a ball.
• Wrap crushed pill in a fruit rollup.
• Crush the pill, take 1 ½ teaspoon of powdered sugar, two match heads of powder koolaid, and a little bit of hot water and mix.
• Mix crushed pills with favorite kind of jelly.

3. Fruits and Juices

• Crush the pill or tablet and mix it in a sweet fruit drink such as Hawaiian punch.
• Try putting crushed pill in orange juice.
• Place a pill in a blackberry, or mix with applesauce or yogurt.
• Try using cranberry concentrate or crush and mix with sodas.
• Stuff the pill or tablet in squares of Jello jigglers.

4. Flavor-X

• The pharmacy can crush the pills or tablets and place them in a suspension and flavor them. There are over 40 flavors. The phone number is 1-800-884-5771. Ask them for the name and number of a local pharmacy. The web site is www.flavorx.com.

Oral Medications

This includes liquid medications and crushed tablets or pills placed into liquids.

1. Use a Syringe to Give the Medications

         ·            Use a syringe that does not have a needle on it and make sure to take off the plastic cap. Then, quickly squirt the mixture into your child's mouth toward the cheek.

         ·            Try placing a pill or tablet into a syringe and mix with grape juice and let the pill or tablet dissolve.

         ·            For difficult to crush pills such as prednisone or methotrexate, crush with a spoon first. Next, place the crushed pill into a syringe and then draw up apple juice, shake and give. Wash the syringe out well with hot water and let air dry. Reuse for oral medications only.

         ·            Crush the pills in a plastic medicine cup and add about 5 drops of water and a squirt of chocolate syrup. Mix them well and pull up in a 5cc syringe and give.

         ·            For large doses of bad tasting liquid medications try using several 1cc syringes. Place the syringe on the outside of the teeth along the cheek and squirt it behind the molars. There are fewer taste buds there. Allow the child to have a little rest between syringes because this gives them some control over taking the medications.

2. Use GelCaps

         ·            Place the crushed pills or tablets or oral medications in gelatin capsules.

Adapted from the Pediatric Oncology Resource Center:
http://www.acor.org/ped-onc/treatment/Pills/pills.html

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Contact Information

Jeff Ungetheim, MA, MDIV.
Support Program
336-713-5984
1-877-861-8634
email: jungethe@wfubmc.edu
Support Program Website
www.wfubmc.edu/brenner/den/CancerSupport/index.html

Marti Hicks, MSW
Social Worker
336-716-6857

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