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…
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. Also, every child is different, and some may want your intervention. I have no experience whatsoever with that.
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.
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
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
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.
This can also be true with the Omnipod: when my son is turned over on his pump side, it can sometimes be hard to get the over-the-air connection to the remote, and you have to move it around like a wand searching for water…
There is an age where this becomes difficult, though, I think: conflict is difficult to deal with when you get into puberty. Our kids (all of them) tend to automatically take a position opposite ours when we argue. It is particularly true of boys and their father, in our household, or, I imagine, everywhere. This could be a life-and-death issue with diabetes. So we have been careful never to get diabetes into a generational conflict situation at home.
As a matter of fact, the most success that my husband has had in convincing my boys to take on an activity has been by never suggesting they take it up…
But Liam is not there yet, so you have a lot of time to figure it out!
I agree with your sentiment on the boys/father conflict, or teen boys and everybody conflict which is the way it seems some of the time with those hormones raging.
In our house, the way we have handled this is to ask our son to set the goals, ideally with no input from us, then all we do is make sure there is a system in place to hold him accountable to his decision. We also ask that he tell us when he changes the goals, although we haven’t always been successful with this part.