My friend has a three year son who has had diabetes since the age of 15 months, and she truly believes that she is taking wonderful care of her son, but his past two A1c levels were a little over 13%, and you should see his arms! This mother believes that as long as he has not been hospitalized since his diagnosis that he is doing just fine. The child refuses to let his mom give him shots anywhere else but his arms — I don’t think a three year old should be able to make that decision. The backs of his little arms look like something from a horror story. It looks like there is a huge goose egg under the skin. I have never seen anything like it. This mother has never read up on diabetes and the long term side effects. Sometimes, she doesn’t even give her son his shot!

This mother honestly believes that she is doing a perfect job. How do you tell someone who has a child with diabetes that she is hurting her child? Would this child’s arms ever return to normal if she did start to use another site for injection?

You might wish to sit down with your friend and go through different aspects of this website. You can present it to her by mentioning that you’d recently learned about a great website for parents of children with diabetes and you’d like to show it to her.

You may also wish to contact her pediatrician or her diabetes team to express your worries, and to alert them to the fact your friend does not have accurate information about caring for a child with diabetes. The high hemoglobin A1c suggests that she is not going to a diabetes team regularly.

Good luck in helping your friend and her son.

JWB

[Editor’s comment: Unfortunately, you really cannot speak with this child’s care team directly without his mother’s permission. In addition to Jill’s thoughts, I’d suggest offering to attend some diabetes classes and clinic appointments with her, under the premise that you might be able to help out managing the diabetes if you understood more.

If this mother refuses help of any sort, your only alternative would be to contact your local division of social services to investigate the neglect. I know this is a difficult thing to do, but it may be the only way to insure the safety of this child.

SS]