I can’t imagine ever sharing that much with my parents. Every parent/child relationship is different though.
Having my parents looking over my shoulder all the time would have beeen a nightmare! Of course, cgms weren’t around then anyway, so it would’ve been different for that reason too.
I may pass the torch and not be watching as carefully all the time if Liams spouse or partner proves that they love him as much as I do.
One of the most important things he can do is marry well.
I totally understand that!
The purpose, though, is not to oversee your child but to be able to be the emergency 911 caller if things go terribly wrong. I hope my son sees it the same way in college. But I don’t know what will happen, really.
To answer your question. I do have Dexcom sharing turned on, but during the day I only have a low alarm at 55. No other alarms. My son is fine if we ask if he treated by text, but honestly I can see the day that he will stop the Dexcom sharing, I like @Michel hope that he lets us follow him through college, but that would be a gift. I would say, I also hope he develops a network and has someone else who will follow him. But that is my wish, not his.
I probably check his Dexcom share data once or twice a week during the day. At night the alarms are set up a bit different, and we do wake him up, but my son has set the alarm thresholds, not us.
We all have been able to have a very good relationship with our kids so far. But I have read and heard of absolutely awful circumstances with 18-year-olds who decide to drop all diabetes care. This is a post I read once, by a kid’s mother, that made me shudder:
he has gotten so far off track I’m so sick w worry . He is currently on an insulin pump but doesn’t check his sugar often maybe once a day he bolouses on a guess so therefore his sugar is always high.The more I gently remind him of how important it is for him to check his sugar or take his insulin he responds by telling me he is grown and I don’t need to tell him what to do . His past a1c was 11 which is really high. He currently has diabetic retinopathy not severe enough to require surgery but has been warned that he needs to get his sugar under control asap . It seems the more I tell him to please take care of himself the more he resists I’m totally heartbroken watching my son destroy his body and I can’t do anything about it .
Above all, this is what I want to avoid.
For all my children…my daughter who is now 23, and my 5 sons, my goal has always been one thing…do those things now, in their youth that will make them want me around when I’m old and they’re on their own. Success, to me, is having holiday meals together as a family when they’re all grown up and on their own. This starts at a young age and is hard work, but I agree with most people here when I say my children all get a say in how things are done. They have a voice and their recommendations are seriously considered - and often times adopted if they make sense.
If my children WANT Erin and I to come around when we’re old; if they WANT us to babysit their kids; if they WANT to be with us during the holidays and special occasions, then I’ve succeeded.
I feel that diabetic children aren’t any different than any other child (except that they can die if not managed correctly)…if you raise them right, they will do the right thing because they respect you, value you and want to make you happy. If Liam sees me viewing his BG data as an invasion of privacy then I would consider that a failure on my part. If he understands that I want to see his BG data out of love and out of care, then I think he’ll be more prone to sharing it, and I will consider my rearing of him as a success. Whether I succeed or fail in this endeavor really is all on me and the things I do with him now and through his toddler, child and teenage years to show him that love and care. Saying the words just isn’t enough.
Parenting is such a game of second-guessing yourself on what you do!
It certainly is the hardest task I have ever had to do.
Cute. Recently I was helping my dad move into a seniors’ residence. He can’t remember a conversation we had two minutes ago, but at one point he said to me, “Isn’t it time for you to eat?”
This is the love of a father.
I can see this being me and Liam in the years to come. lol
That’s cute with your aged father… and it’s heartwarming for me when my own 98 y/o grandmother, who I’m there to keep an eye on and ensure her wellbeing, mentions the same…
With people less advanced in years (and in theory; more advanced in cognitive ability) it’s actually a bit irritating to me that even my own currently practicing physician mother cant seem to expand her comprehension of the issue beyond “is it time for you to eat now?..”
I know some people don’t agree with some of my comments. I am not tyring to change anyone’s mind. But I am speaking from my view atop a mountain of 46 years of experience, and I know a lot of parents don’t have that same perspective.
I have been through it all - 5 years old to puberty to adolescence to college to young adulthood to old age. So hear me out on a this one observation.
I went and found some old camp literature from the diabetes camp I went to (and letters I wrote to my parents from camp with 10 cent stamps on them 
).
Here is the camp. 12 days. It says ages 9-15, but I was actually 8 years old. They got permission to “sneak” me in a year early.
Camp was 12 days.
Some of the rules. No visiting, no sending food or money or goodies, no phone calls. If there is an emergency, the camp calls the parents. Parents don’t get to talk to their children for 12 days. That’s just how it was.
Here is one page of my urine test log and insulin dosing. A zero means no sugar was in the urine. You see the word “cube” written there on August 5. A sugar cube was given for a low blood sugar. I had a low and the nurse gave me blood test. Mostly zeros for urine tests, with nothing but a shot of “N” and “R”.
Check out the adjustment from 24 to 22 after I had a low that one day.
My mom cried about sending me, but she did it because she knew it was the best thing for me. I was totally self-sufficient after camp.
It was different back then. I shared my perspective because my reality was simply that I needed to took care of myself, even at a very young age. I did it in college because I did it when I was 8. I didn’t need to learn anything new.
Letting go is hard. But I am very grateful that my mom and dad had the strength to do it, because it let me grow up. Unlimited.
What was the survival ratio at this camp?
Kidding. I think this is wonderful. I think diabetes camp should be mandatory for all diabetes kids including the radio silence… and with strict rules prohibiting cgm as well!
@Eric can you highlight yourself in the camp picture?
I think diabetes camp rules are just the same today!
From what I know, I think that all the teenagers with parents regularly on this forum have been to diabetes camp. I could be wrong?
I know it was a wonderful thing for us. My son has been to two of them already, and he loves D camp.
To me the disease was always self-motivating. I never needed any external motivation because it was always obvious to me that I felt much better when I had good BG than when I had bad BG.
I think you’re lucky in this respect. We’ve backed off on Samson’s insulin dosing in an attempt to control lows, and while it’s very clear to me he feels better without lows, running in the high range (160-180) for hours doesn’t seem to affect him at all. I had sort of hoped he would feel crummier at this level so he’d be motivated to keep in range when we hand over the reins.
Call me naive, but I am not overly concerned about our son’s control when he gets to the teen years, as I anticipate that a) finger pricks will be unecessary b) algorithms for dosing will be good enough that even “lax” control as is common by a teenager (for instance not bolusing for meals) will result in decent control that we are getting now with more active management c) there will be some method for counteracting lows automatically.
Given that, our goal is to ensure he keeps lines of communication open during his teen years, keeps up his sensors, doesn’t drink, and changes his sites regularly. And in my opinion the best way to ensure that is to make sure we’re matter-of-fact but also not punitive with his BG control. At this stage he has little autonomy obviously, but he does (a remove sites that we’ve put unisolve on b) tell us when he’s low c) carry his black bag with his openAPS wherever e goes on the playground so it’s always in range. Samson’s personality is to always want to be at the next stage (my MIL jokes that he’s ready to get a job), so I hope that works to his advantage, making him more responsible – as opposed to him facing teen-rebellion issues at age 8 or something.
We are at the point of acting about 13 (maybe 3?) when it comes time for a pod change. They’re causing EH pain and/or they are uncomfortable. I’ve got to lay down the law and it makes me feel like a jerk. I’m trying cajoling too this week. Seems more effective.
Diabetic children are smarter of course! Duh! 
I am following this thread with interest. The teenage years for my T1 son, are a long way off, but I have lived through it already myself so I think I worry a lot less than those parents here that do not have T1.
Like Eric says, I just took care of myself during my teen years because that it what needed to be done. For most of my teen years I was on two shots a day of R/NPH and my diet was basically fixed so there was not a lot of treatment decisions to be made. Usually before exercise I would eat some carbs and after a couple of lows or highs you would adjust the insulin - but rarely. My parents somewhat hovered in the background, but there really was not a lot to micro mange. Corrections didn’t really happen that often - only with the two shots or on the rare occasion mid-day if I was sick or something was really off.
I think today, with our CGMs and almost unlimited BG test strips, we add a lot of complication to our treatment regime. For that added complication, we get to be more unlimited. We can eat when we want and what we want if we can line everything up right. So when I say I managed my treatment as a teen, I definitely did not micromanage it like I do now 
But back to the OP question - I think that the whole rebellion thing is interesting. I know someone who was diagnosed with T1 later in his teen years and did stupid things like purposely not giving insulin. I have a feeling that he was rebelling against everything and that T1 was just something else to push against.
I can relate to this completely 
Also I did not want high blood sugars during an exam because it would make me run to the bathroom more often and cut into precious exam time.
So was I - but in elementary school I did not test at school because the Glucoscan 2000 was a bit of a beast to carry 
The only thing I needed to do in elementary school was eat my lunch and snacks on time and treat a low if one occurred.
When talking to our endo, there are three things they worry about and see every day:
While many of you guys didn’t suffer from these issues, many do. As a parent, I worry…I hope to be pleasantly surprised that my son doesn’t suffer from any of these, but realistically I realize that he could, and we will be there if he needs help.
