My 16 year old daughter has had Type 1 Diabetes for 8 years. She is a senior in high school this year. My concern is regarding her sloppiness and its effects on Diabetes management.
My daughter is highly messy and does not keep anything in its place. Needles and lancets lie all over her room. She does not bother to double check if she has her supplies when going out and things like that.
Being a teen is hard and being a teen with diabetes is harder. As a parent I am highly concerned about her habits as she will be heading to college next year.
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My daughter just turned 14, so I don’t feel the same urgency you must be experiencing with your daughter heading off to college soon. But I hear your pain! My daughter used to be so diligent about making sure she had an insulin vial in a “charged” Frio pouch, extra Pods, alcohol and Skin Tac wipes, just-in-case-syringes, a purse-sized sharps container, extra batteries for her PDM, glucose tabs, etc. in her diabetes purse every time she left our house. Several times recently we’ve had to cut errands short and return home when her Pod ran out of insulin and she “forgot” her insulin vial at home. Additionally, she’s started giving me the “why don’t you die and leave me alone” stare whenever the Dexcom Share alarms on my iPhone letting me know she’s gone below 65 or above 160 and I ask her to treat or correct. When I reprimanded (yelled at 
) her recently when she gave me the “eff off” sigh and death stare for the bazillionth time, she played the D-card: “It’s not my fault I have D! None of my friends have to deal with this $h!T!” For once, I held firm and did the tough-love thing, and said something along the lines of “I know. It’s not your fault that you have D, it’s not fair, and it sucks the big one. But the reality is that you have D. So you must begin being more responsible about your D-care. I’m going to start to hold you more accountable for this because you’ll be heading off to college in 4 years and I won’t be going with you.” I’ve always tried not to be one of those helicopter D-moms who don’t let their kids with Type 1 go on sleepovers anymore, etc. But we do have a rule that she must answer her iPhone on sleepovers during the night if I call to tell her to ingest some fast carbs or correct a high (I’m still in charge of overnights because she does not wake to Dexcom alarms. She doesn’t wake to phone calls either, but she can only go on sleepovers if one of her friends awakens to phone calls. When she begins her senior year in high school, if she is still not waking up to Dexcom alerts, I will get her the Earthquake app.) Well, several days ago, she blew it. It was about 6 AM and my Share alert sounded, alerting me to a high. I called her no less than 10 times in relatively rapid succession, but no answer. I called her friend’s mom, no answer. Luckily, the mom answered the second time I called and woke up my daughter and told her to correct. This sort of thing has only happened about twice in the past, and both times I ended up cutting her some slack. But this, coupled with the recent crap she gives me around needing to correct, etc., was IT as far as I was concerned. I had her father pick her up from her friend’s house and bring her home immediately. Of course, she played the D-card (just want to add that sometimes playing the D-card isn’t inappropriate and I give her all the support in the world on those occasions) and added that she never received my calls because they decided to sleep in her friend’s daylight basement and it turns out there is no cell reception there. I stood my ground and said that she should have thought of that (it’s not like she’s never encountered cell service drop-off before) and that she was grounded from sleepovers for one week. You’d think I shot her dog with the audible crying and hour + of sniffling that ensued. And her distress worked, to a certain extent, because I felt guilty as crap on toast. But she’s demonstrated a great deal more D-responsibility since.
Enough about my daughter and I. The point I’m trying to make is that you have precious little time in which to perform some tough-D-love magic. My advice is to outline (in writing with two copies: one for you and one for your daughter) some reasonable expectations surrounding your daughter’s D-responsibilities and appropriate consequences that you will enforce if she does not follow through with her responsibilities (more suggested specifics in a bit) and find as neutral a time as possible to sit down with her to go over the new “house rules.” I suggest prefacing this discussion with a few sentences addressing how much you love her and want her to live as healthy, happy, long, and complication(s)-free life as possible, and how you won’t be physically there to make sure she does what she needs to do once she leaves for college. Be prepared for a crap-ton of righteous indignation, but hold firm. And start following through with consequences every time she shirks her responsibilities. Will this insure that she won’t ever blow off her D-care once she flies the coop? Probably not. But it’s the best shot you have at this point in the game to guard against recurrent and long-standing neglect that will result in hospitalization(s) for DKA, complications, (or worse). I’d also insist that she read Wil Dubois’s post on how to drink alcohol if you have Type 1.
http://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/d-teens-and-alcohol-no-bull-from-uncle-wil
Because there’s no way in heck our kids are not going to party. And you may want to consider what I am going to do once my daughter starts college: send a care-package containing condoms every so often. (Ewww! 
) Also, insist she connect with her university’s Type 1 network. It goes without saying that they listen to their peers more than they listen to us…
More in a bit.
We think very highly of the College Diabetes Network. Great resource for college age kids and their parents.
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Speaking as an outsider, it seems to me that parents earn the right to embarrass kids from time to time, as a suitable reward for what they (the parents) have to endure. And I can’t think of a more effective method than sending a package of condoms. Seems only fair. 
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I’ll continue popping in with shorter “tidbit” posts, as my typin’ fingers are feeling fatigued right now…
Not meaning to sound like a D-mom beotch, but RE the used needles all over the floor in her room: That has got to STOP, like yesterday!!! This is the one thing I’ve never tolerated since Day One. If I were you, I’d give my daughter exactly 15 minutes from right now to pick up every single used needle in the house and properly dispose of them in a proper sharps container. If she does not comply, or if you ever come across an improperly disposed of sharp in your home or its vicinity ever again, I’d ground her for a week with no cell phone every time. Right or wrong, there is zero tolerance for leaving used sharps lying about in the real world (which includes dorm rooms)! Inform your daughter that she could very well be kicked out of on-campus housing and banned from ever returning to said housing for this kind of thoughtless and dangerous behavior.
RE used test strips: I am extremely forgiving and tolerant about these. Because everyone knows that used test strips are capable of climbing out of trashcans either with or without the assistance of well-meaning pets.
Oh, oh, oh . . . volumes could be written about that . . .
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My daughter will be starting college in January, so I can understand your concern. I think I need more info before commenting. Your daughter has been living with T1 for 8 years. Is this behavior something new, or has she acted this way since dx? It makes a difference in how I would handle it. As for leaving the house without supplies, that wouldn’t happen with my daughter more than once, because she wouldn’t go out again until she showed responsibility. She’s 16, so you still have responsibility for her care, & also at least a little control over her activities.
Just an FYI… My campus doesn’t have a support network for diabetes. My NP and I talked about it just this week (she was complimenting my adherence to my treatment plan). I’m hoping to work on starting one… But I’m a non-traditional student and it’s a lot of work.
So keep this in mind as you read these posts, she may need to do this on her own, and the only way to prep her is to start now.
I love all you parents out there with children dealing with type 1 diabetes. You are all gifts from God! I don’t know how my parents did it, but they did and here I am still kicking.
Teen years are the toughest to deal with diabetes or not. But when you throw diabetes into the mix, it’s even harder.
I agree that sharps laying around is something that needs to correct now. It is a health hazard that may harm others. There is no discussion about that one.
And I know as a parent (I am also one), it is so hard to see your child do something that might harm them. But sometimes those experiences are the best learning tools. As hard as it maybe, you can only ask so many times for her to be prepared before leaving the house, but if she does chose that, she will learn how hard diabetes is when not ready for anything that might come her way. Yes, yes, I know how hard it is to watch someone you love make a big mistakes but as I have done it a few times over my 45 years, I have now learned to always have my kit packed with everything I might need in any emergency. Learning experience for me was missing a family function because I didn’t have enough insulin with me. Now I don’t leave the house without backup. Or the having to leave work early because I didn’t have enough strips. So now my kit is packed.
Being messy and be a nightmare for some roommates but most colleges really work hard at putting like people together. So if she is messy and can’t keep her room clean, as long as she is honest on the questionnaire’s all new students fill out, she will probably be put with someone who also doesn’t care about what their room looks. Heaven help them and everyone else on their floor. (Kidding or maybe not depending on how bad they are!)
Yes, I know how hard these years are but every experience she goes through will be a learning one and some will be very, very hard. Good luck and I hope she gets it soon so she can be happy and safe and you can happy and secure with where she is at.
Thanks for all the inputs . I am trying and I am sure my daughter is too. We have had conversations about sharp needles in her room many times , and although she takes care during school trips out of town , at home she slacks . But college dorm is going to be her home soon . Hoping she will rise up to it .
With academics, sports and all other activities that our children do like other kids ,the line between being normal and not having to take care of extra supplies and being diabetic with extra burden of the disease, fades a bit sometimes . It is a concern and I am glad to hear from experienced parents that this can be solved . I will ask her to contact the Diabetes support groups in the college she gets accepted into .