Question from Glendale, Arizona, USA:

My son, who will be six in January, is adopted. We adopted him when he was 18 months old. Since then, he was diagnosed with ADHD, but, due to some behaviors, we are questioning if he has diabetes or is this just how he is. My son weighs only 31 pounds. He can’t seem to gain weight and is way under the chart for weight/height for his age. He has always been like this. He urinates a lot, especially at night, and continues to wear pull-ups. Sometimes he has accidents at school. He has always been very thirsty and craves sweet drinks or sweet foods. He complains about headaches and his stomach since he started on Ritalin for ADHD. When he gets a sore on his body, it takes awhile for it to heal. And, in the past year alone, he has had several sores pop up in his mouth that seem to take forever to go away. The doctor told me that it was the hand-foot-and-mouth disease, but he didn’t have the blisters anywhere else. I took him to the doctor yesterday and asked that they check him for type 1 diabetes and do general blood work, etc. His urine came back fine. However, the doctor says that he will do the fasting test and the A1c test to either dismiss or diagnose diabetes. I asked him what the glucose ranges are for children and he said they are the same for us and it didn’t matter whether my son’s blood sugar was high during the day or at night. He was only concerned for morning levels. To me, this didn’t sound right. I have type 2 and I check fasting/bedtime levels. I have tested my son’s levels for the past three days. His fasting levels were 140 mg/dl [7.8 mmol/L] to 190 mg/dl [10.6 mmol/L], with bedtime/two to three hour post meal readings around 180 mg/dl [10.0 mmol/L]. Am I right to question this? Is the doctor knowledgeable in what he says? In regards to type 1 diabetes, what are the normal ranges for children?