Better Tasting Medicine

Children can get sick for a variety of reasons. This includes not eating the right kind of food, no proper hygiene, change in weather, getting infected, and many others. Some of these can be treated without the need for medicines while there are other illnesses that require taking medication.

Over-the-counter medicines for children typically include medicine feeders, droppers or small measuring cups. They also have great tasting flavors, making it easy to take for children. Some parents may have children that just don’t like taking medicines. Perhaps it’s due to the taste or they really just don’t feel well. We didn’t have difficulty with letting our little babet take her medications when she was already over a year old. When she was just a few months old, it was a bit difficult primarily because she was still a little baby and was probably not accustomed to the taste of medicine. However, there are cases where over-the-counter medicines just won’t do and your pediatrician prescribes an antibiotic for your child. If you’ve never had any trouble letting your child take antibiotics then lucky you. But for most parents, I believe, this is when the real struggle begins.

Why struggle, you ask? It’s simply because antibiotics do not taste good. If medicines for cough, colds, fever, and allergies can be made to taste better, antibiotics just taste like, well, medicine. Some have added flavors but these just don’t mask it enough and still leave a certain taste. Plus, antibiotics have certain textures that add to the problem. And when children really taste medicine, they don’t want to have anything to do with it. It makes giving medications frustrating and you end up forcing it on your child just so they will get better. Which really makes me wonder, why can’t they make better tasting antibiotics?

I’m no pharmacist and perhaps there is a good reason why. Maybe adding flavors could interfere with the medicine’s efficacy. If you’re suggesting trying a tablet/capsule instead, then that’s another struggle since you have to teach the child how to swallow it first (I'm imagining how I'll explain this to a 2-year-old). Crushing the tablet so that it will be in powder form and then mixing it with food or juice seems like a better option. But still, your child may still be able to detect something tastes a bit different. There are those suggesting on mixing liquid medication with fruit juices and the like. So we ask again, doesn’t this affect the medicine’s efficacy?

You know what works for your child and you know what doesn’t. Our little babet, for example, doesn’t seem to like even bubblegum flavored chewable tablets. Then again, what works for them when they are still young may not work anymore when they’re a bit older. Forcing medicines may give them a traumatic experience and no parent would want that. However, they do have to take their medication and when there’s no other way to go about it, parents are left with no choice.

How about using a syringe type feeder and then placing it at the right position in your child’s mouth? Well, this is worth another try and actually looks promising. Let’s just hope and pray that our little babet doesn’t throw up like she did on a previous occasion.

If you have the same dilemma and would like to try some of these methods, make sure that you ask your pediatrician if doing so is okay and will not affect the medicine’s efficacy. Ask them for suggestions on how to best give the medicine, especially when it doesn’t taste good. 

There has to be a better way; one that doesn’t involve forcing or that doesn’t leave a traumatic experience. There has to be a way that won’t make parents feeling frustrated or that cause children to become anxious when it’s time to take their medicine. And so we continue to hope that there will be better tasting antibiotics in the near future. 

If you have the same experience, let us know. We’d love to know how it worked out for you and your little one.