Diabetes can be difficult to manage when the patient is an adult, but it is even more difficult when the patient is a child. Children have constantly changing nutritional needs as they flux between growth and development spurts and plateaus. Children are also faced with more chances to catch illnesses and diseases at school then adult diabetics face at work or at home. In addition to these challenges, they also face more temptations to stray away from their diabetic diet. School parties, birthdays, holidays, and other functions provide many opportunities for diabetic children to eat foods that could be harmful to their health. In order to combat all of these potentially hazardous elements of being a child with type 1 diabetes, the diabetic child needs to be educated about their condition and about their treatment plan.
Parents with children who have just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes may be just as confused and overwhelmed with what they need to know and do as the children are. Education should therefore be a family event. Everyone in the family will need to know five major pieces of information in order to provide the support and treatment the diabetic child will need to stay healthy. The first piece of information is how to recognize and treat hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia is high blood sugar, and it is the main cause of health complications in diabetics. The symptoms of this condition are sometimes hard to identify as they are similar to symptoms of common illnesses, and sometimes this condition has no symptoms at all. This makes frequent blood glucose monitoring critical to maintaining a healthy glucose level. The main symptoms for hyperglycemia are: thirst, more urges to urinate, high levels of sugars and proteins in the urine, and high levels of glucose in the blood. This condition can often be effectively treated simply with exercise, however if there is a high concentration of ketones in the urine, exercise should not be used as a treatment method as this could increase the severity of a tangent condition called ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis is a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body is unable to eliminate proteins known as ketones that are created when fat is broken down. If the body is unable to eliminate these ketones they build up to toxic levels in the body. The symptoms of this condition include fruity smelling breath, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, and dry mouth. If these symptoms accompany high blood glucose the diabetic needs emergency medical care.