Minisode #8: When A Child With T1D is Afraid to Get Back in the Game Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes

When a child is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, most of the time the parents are told that T1D won't stop them. People with diabetes play sports, climb mountains, pursue acting and singing careers and much more. But what happens if a young child is scared to get back in the swing of things?
Stacey has advice for a family she met whose little boy is so afraid of low blood sugar, that he's sitting out his beloved soccer games.
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Episode transcription:
Stacey Simms  0:00
This episode of Diabetes Connections is brought to you by the World’s Worst Diabetes Mom real life stories of parenting a child with Type 1 diabetes available on Amazon as a paperback eBook and audiobook and at Diabetes Connections.com.
 
Announcer  0:21
This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.
 
Stacey Simms  0:27
Hello, and welcome to a minisode of Diabetes Connections. Today I want to talk to you about a question that came up. When I traveled to Maine. This was a couple of weeks ago, I visited a group called the Maine P-Pods. It was a really fun event where I did my World’s Worst Diabetes Mom presentation. And we also had a presentation from Dr. Howard Wolpert who is a renowned endocrinologist and he talked about carbohydrates and really did a good medical presentation as you would expect. And then the two of us - this was really cool -. We got to Do q&a with the audience. So you had me, the mom, the lay person partnered with a pretty terrific endocrinologist. And then there were other healthcare professionals in the audience who were there kind of for support and popped in as well. I'm pretty sure they were also there to make sure I didn't go off the rails, because they hadn't heard me speak before. And when you're billed as the World’s Worst Diabetes Mom, I think they want to make sure you're not going to give the world's worst diabetes advice.
I want to share with you a question that came up that I think probably comes up more often than we realize. This was a mom and dad of a recently diagnosed I probably a couple of months in I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly. But my impression was, let's say six months ago, maybe four months ago. This was a six year old, and this six year old had been so excited to play soccer, really wanted to play soccer, loves soccer, can't wait to join the soccer team. But now with type 1 diabetes, the mom is sharing that the six year old is terrified to play soccer, because he is afraid of going low. And it's really breaking her heart, because he has a brother who is playing soccer and is doing just fine.
So the question was, how can I get my child over his fear of low blood sugars? And I thought this was a great question. Because what we normally get is all the rah rah cheerleading of, you know, our kids can do anything, and diabetes won't stop you and get right back in there. And, you know, that's probably what happens. Most of the time if the parents go along with it, right. It's for the parents to say, right, we're going to get right back in here we go, here we go. But this can't be the only child who is frightened for some reason. So what's going on?
I asked her a couple of questions. And I told her not to answer because, you know, there's only so much information you really want to put out publicly right and I don't want to pop psychologize that's really the turn of phrase, but you know what I mean? I didn't want to play psychologist when I'm certainly not in a, an educated position to do so. But no, it had the medical people there to back me up. I thought it was on pretty safe ground. So I asked her, Wha