Just a spoonful of yogurt makes the medicine go down!

#1 has been prescribed some medication that has to be swallowed whole, so we have been working on teaching a 5 year old how to do it. We started by using the Mini M&Ms and a cup of cold water or milk with a straw. We asked him to take a sip first so that his throat was cold and wet and might make the pill slide down easier. Next we put the M&M on his tongue and asked him to drink from the straw.

At first, he would have a mouth full of water or milk with the M&M but I would see his jaws chewing the M&M before swallowing it all. Every time he swallowed an M&M without chewing it he got to have 5 M&Ms as a reward. He finally got the concept and we started him on his trial pack of medicines.

One day he accidentally chewed the pill so I made him swallow it anyway. BIG MISTAKE! The medicine is a time-release medicine so it made him incredibly sleepy at school (he fell asleep in the hallway at school while waiting for his classmates to finish going potty and was sleeping on the playground as well). Lesson learned!

When I mentioned it to his teacher, she said that as a child she had a hard time swallowing pills herself, so here are a few things that helped her:

1. Dipping the pill in butter to make it slide down more easily
2. Putting the pill onto a spoonful of yogurt or pudding (since you don't normally chew those things).

Anyway, some days have been really rough getting him to take his medication and others were fairly easy. Yesterday we went through 2 cups of milk, 2 cartons of yogurt, and after an hour of trying he accidentally chewed it so I made him spit it out. Today was a breeze and only took a few sips from a straw of his juice box.

I thought I'd share these tips I learned in case you have little ones who need to swallow pills too!