What Age Should We Stop

Type 1 & LADA T1 Teen/College
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This is for the parents out there. I was in a discussion with our resident meerkat (@Thomas) and he mentioned that he loved the ability of a pump remote to treat his child with insulin in the night without waking said child.

My son at 13 made us stop administering insulin to him in his sleep. He wants to make all insulin decisions, and outside of times when he is very sick, I wouldn’t think of administering insulin without his knowledge. His reasoning is that he might wake up a short time later, miss the fact that he has IOB and redose for the high.

I guess this is good, although it means he wakes up most nights and doses for his highs, but it also makes him more autonomous. My question to you, is what age should you stop administering insulin to your child at night so they are ready to leave the nest for college or whatever lies after high school?

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2

This is such a difficult question, and one I ask myself every few days.

My son is 13, and does not wake up for alarms at all. He sleeps through everything, loud sounds, lights…

But he also has many puberty peaks in the evening, pretty much every night. If he had to wake up to treat every peak or low, he would be up every night, most of the time until at least 2 am. This is not sustainable for us.

I can only speak for us. I hope that his puberty peaks will reduce in frequency sometime in the next 2-3 years. When that happens, we would like him to take on night duty, at which time I hope he will be waking up to alarms. I would like this time to be at least 2 years before college, so that he has a couple of years of night duty before he is on his own.

If the frequency of his night BG management challenges does not go down drastically within 2-3 years, I think he still will need to take charge of at least a portion of his nights when he gets to be 15 or 16, because, otherwise, I feel he will not be ready for college. But I am concerned of what this will mean for his sleep.

So I suppose that I am saying 15-16 is the age where I think it is necessary for my son to take on most nights, in my opinion today.

The reason why I’d rather he did not do it today is because of the immense impact this would have on his sleep. And I really don’t think he can wake up to alarms right now. It sometimes takes me 5 minutes to wake him up at night.

College is a big bugaboo for us. It is what worries me most when I think of the future. I think that, if he survives college, he will make it through young adulthood. But I see college as a high risk. So getting him trained and ready for college is the most important thing we can do, imho.

I think it is wonderful that your son was mature enough to do this at age 13!!! I hope it does not mean that he has to stay up as mine would have to. But I figure that, if that were the case, you would find a way to alleviate his burden.

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Ditto.

Ditto.

Ditto.

Ditto.

Don’t know what we will do. Only so many things I can worry about. Some future things have to be ignored to be able to deal with today. That is just the reality of my situation.

I am very much hoping the two planned Tandem updates (PLGS - Summer 2018 and HCL - 2019) will prove to be immensely helpful in this regard.

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4

One change. I “used” to love …
lol
Very sad the remote is gone. (Well - sitting up on the closet next to the old Animas pump.)

Now it is trying to remember which side the infusion set is on and then trying to find the pump. Like a scavenger hunt.

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5

On the days when I know my wife is taking the kids to school in the morning, and it’s not my job to, I don’t wake up for the alarm either… I trust her completely to take care of business without me waking up…

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Same for me. The only time I wake up is when I have to.

There is no need to wake up if there is no need to wake up.

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Based on my experience as being a teen with T1 diabetes, I’d give a 13-14 year old as much control as possible unless his/her A1c goes out of range or you notice concerning patterns in their cgm data. As a teenager, altercations about my diabetes rarely resulted in me acting more responsibly or doing what my parents wanted. I’d say around 13-14 for a more hands-off approach, depending on how long ago the diagnosis was (how well the child understands how to manage their diabetes).

I’m not a parent though, and I’m sure it’s hard to not intervene when you’re worried about your child. :slight_smile: Also, every child is different, and some may want your intervention. I have no experience whatsoever with that.

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That makes me feel better. Because EH is the same way (no kids, but trusts me to do decision making). (Like now, midnight in Sweden and he’s out cold. Just added some more humalog to the mix because he’s still at 227.)

I was thinking that there’s a time when everyone has to fly solo, so to speak. But if they don’t want to/have to/need to, then…maybe help is okay?

I’m glad all of you parents out there have each other. And I enjoy being a fly on the wall (a loud, chatty fly) and getting to read your thoughts about these issues.

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9

Well it is nice, although somewhat nerve wracking, and it did require us to accept A1c’s in the 6’s as opposed to the 5’s, because there are nights when he chooses not to treat more than once. i.e. he will wake up once around 1 am almost reflexively and treat if he is high, but that is it. Also, he doesn’t wake up to the alarms either, my wife or I do, and we wake him up, then he treats if it is outside of the 1am time period, which it often is. Those darned nighttime highs just don’t seem to want to cooperate and hit at the same time.

edit: to preserve sleep which is super important, we will only wake him one additional time per night, and only if he is above 250

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Yeah, finding the pump can be challenging. My son wears a belly band, and it can be all twisted up. Sometimes he has trouble finding it!

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Ah the good old days. I went through five years of college and dental school and didn’t even have a Bg meter (they weren’t available yet).

Of course I’m sure my A1c was somewhere in the 9-10 range. But who cared? A1c was not even around then either.

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12

Just imagine the potential you could have reached if you’d had a Dexcom! (Kidding)

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13

I am not so worried about my son’s A1c there. I would, however, like him to simply survive his college years: what I am worried about is primarily an exercise- or alcohol-induced low at night.

I will be heavily invested in the boy by then— big sunk costs, want to see them pay off :slight_smile:

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14

Yeah, I could have been King of Moldovia! Or maybe even a real doctor :wink:

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15

MALdovia!

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16

Lets not get carried away…

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17

I hope to get Liam to the point where he’s RESPONSIBLY managing his diabetes. IF he proves to his mother and I that he can manage well enough alone, that’s our goal and we would be happy to step away and only monitor. But if he’s got poor management, we’ll continue making decisions for him whether he wants us too or not. Our goal is to have a strong, healthy child who grows into an equally strong and healthy young man, then grown man, then old man. As long as he’s a minor, we’ll always have final say in his management IF he doesn’t have good management on his own.

Part of his includes his ability to “be responsible” and wake up to alarms that he must learn to hear and react too when he has lows, or highs. If he shows us that he can wake up and self-manage, AWESOME…we’ll get more sleep; otherwise, whether he’s 13 years old, or 17 years, 11 months, and 29 days old…we’ll manage and continue enforcing to him the importance of GOOD MANAGEMENT so that he’s around for many years to come for all of those people who love him and want him around to bury his parents one day.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: How do you influence your teen’s diabetes management

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I think I keep causing this problem. lol Sorry!

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According to @Michel, this is a good problem to have. :smile: Splitting posts is what all the cool kids do.

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