This week, I’m talking to a mom with an all-too-familiar problem:  Her teenager, diagnosed for years now and a conscientious diabetes manager until recently, has basically given up on bolusing.  Mom is at her wit’s end, trying to figure out how to help her daughter pick this habit back up.  She’s tried lots of strategies: motivational talk, discussion of best health practices, and even threats.  None of it seems to be working.  And mom just feels like a constant (and exhausted) nag.  Together...

This week, I talked with a mom whose T1D son recently left for college. It’s clear that mom trusts her son – and that they have a good relationship – but she’s also nervous about him being on his own.  A lovely priority for her is to make sure that he knows that she’s there for him. We discuss how important it is for her to take a step back and make room for his voice.  The operating question in this episode:  What does he want from her?   Some highlights: Thinking about growing your T1D...

For today’s episode, a mom came on to share how her 9-year-old son has become increasingly and newly worried anytime his CGM shows a high reading. We were able to trace this new anxiety to one particularly traumatic experience when he was over 400 for several hours and his parents (and grandparents) weren’t sure why he was high and were pretty anxious themselves.  Together, mom and I understood that this kiddo probably picked up on the high energy of that one day which put him in an elevated...

I’m so lucky this week to have Kaylor Glassman on the show. I know Kaylor through DYF, the organization that runs a diabetes camp in Northern California; she used to be the program director there. Now she has a business called Diabetes Support Partners, which is specifically designed to help families with a newly diagnosed child.  The question we’re tackling is about T1D siblings and about how much diabetes support we parents can ask of them. The parent writing in has a newly diagnosed 6 year...

What a dilemma!  To stay or to go?  In this episode, I talked to a lovely mother who is debating whether she should move to live near her family who she knows can and will support her and her newly diagnosed daughter.  The sticking point is that she also loves her job, feeling like she won the “career lottery” – and she isn’t sure she wants to give that up.  Since her daughter is still in the first year after diagnosis, she came onto the podcast to better understand what will change with her...

This week, I had a wonderful conversation with my old T1D mom friend, Tamar.  Tamar and I met at camp a million years ago and our children were diagnosed on the same day!  She’s a veteran, so you’ll hear a robust conversation about the question. A parent wrote in, saying that her son wants to eat “normally.”  Together, Tamar and I think about both how that’s possible — and why it’s vital to meet that need as best as the parent can (while still, of course, trying to keep blood sugars in...

What a complex issue!  This week, a mom came on the show, talking about how her somewhat-newly diagnosed 7-year-old has been pulling off her pump.  Mom has been working hard to stay calm in the face of all these pump “failures” but really wants to get at the root of the problem, so her daughter stops derailing her own treatment.  She’s thinking about the kinds of consequences she might need to dole out around treatment options because — understandably! — She’s worried and wants this to...

I had an interesting conversation this week with a mom of a T1D pre-schooler.  Because she’s managed to keep dosing pretty invisible and seamless for him thanks to tech, she’s worrying that he doesn’t understand that he needs insulin to eat. As we explored the issues of how she could introduce the idea to him about this, we also were able to better understand her very normal worries about what’s to come with diabetes.  She shared how diabetes made her feel less confident as a parent and the...

Sure, we want our kids to like their low supplies — after all, they sometimes need to eat them when they don’t want to eat a thing.  But we don’t want them to like them so much that they eat them for fun. That would equal a blood sugar disaster.  In this episode, T1D mom Julie comes to talk about just that:  Her four-year-old was high for several days in a row and she had no idea why until he showed her the wrappers for his low supplies that he had stashed under his hamper.  We...

Diabetes anniversaries!  If you go onto Facebook, you’ll see a lot of photos of kids with cakes celebrating this milestone.  But not everyone wants to take that on.  In fact, some people just feel like diabetes is a bummer, and not something they want to celebrate in any way.  In this episode, fellow T1D mom Annie and I discuss a question from a listener who wrote asking whether she should have a dia-anniversary celebration for her daughter’s first year with T1D.  It was clear that she was...

With diabetes, there’s the independence dance:  Sometimes our kids want to learn and grow into new tasks and responsibilities with their own self-care — and sometimes they’d rather hand it back to us.  What makes this particularly hard is the chatter in our own heads.  We parents worry when our kids take a step backward, thinking that we need to hold the line to ensure that our kids move only forward in their diabetes care. In this week’s episode, I talk through this issue with Samantha, a...

We all remember what it was like when our T1D child was first diagnosed: The shock and sadness — and the steep, steep learning curve to trying to get diabetes “right.”  As we watched each reading and each bite of food, we worried about being away from our child, and we wanted that CGM as quickly as possible.   In this episode, the mom of a newly diagnosed 8-year-old girl comes to talk about the dilemma she’s having about sending her daughter to an art camp — without a CGM.  Of course, she’s...

Another listener wrote in with a question about drug use for their T1D kid so I asked Dr. Justin Altschuler, a T1D and addiction doc, back onto the show to provide answers.  In this episode, we tackle issues that come up around experimenting with “harder” drugs, like cocaine, hallucinogens, and opiates. Dr. Justin leans into his experience as a substance doctor to explain what he knows about how these substances can affect T1D.  A few takeaways: While Dr. Justin discusses the various...

Getting help and feeling misunderstood: the bane of a T1D parent’s existence.  But what happens when we feel misunderstood by the people who are supposed to be closest to us, like our own family? Because I’ve heard these challenges from so many parents, I took this question from a listener who’s struggling with family misunderstanding about their child’s T1D.  It’s feeling so bad that they are thinking about walking away from the relationship altogether. Annie and I discuss: The ways it can...

This episode surprised me — it’s the first time I’ve had a couple come on the show together to help them navigate the stress and challenges that come up because they have a type 1 child.  It’s like a sneak-peak into a couples therapy session.  In Colleen and Wesley’s case, their disagreement centers around food and eating. Since we know that diabetes can make for more difficulties in our relationships, this episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to co-parent their T1D child.   Some...

One of the ways so many of us manage our nighttime anxiety after our kids’ initial diagnosis is by pulling them into bed with us.  We have a magical belief that we will keep them safer if they are right next to us as they sleep.  And while that’s a reasonable strategy for a time — until we can get our own anxiety and shock under control — it’s not an answer for the long term.  In this episode, fellow T1D mom Annie and I think through a question from a mom who’s been sleeping with her T1D...

Parents know that mixing alcohol and type 1 brings extra challenges. Although we’ve tackled this topic before, Dr. Justin Altschuler is back to answer more listener questions about how to navigate the tricky territory of drinking with T1D. And just as a reminder: Not only does Dr. Justin have a private practice that specializes in addiction and T1D, but he serves as the medical director of Diabetes Youth Families (DYF), the organization in the Bay Area that hosts diabetes camp, and has T1D...

Sending our T1D kids to school can be hard, but we know we have to find a way — after all, they need to be there and we know that the school needs to help us make that happen.  It can feel really different, though, when we need to lean into our community to ask friends to take care of our type 1 kiddos for something like a sleepover.  Sure, our kids deserve that social interaction, but how do we muster up the courage to ask for help?   In this episode, fellow T1D parent Annie and I think...

Camp!  If you’ve come to almost any event I’ve hosted or been part of, you know that I’m a big proponent of diabetes camp.  There are so many good reasons for this but the biggest is that our kids benefit from being in a community with other people who also have diabetes.  So what to do when you tell your T1D child that you’re planning to send them to camp and they — firmly and adamantly — tell you that they don’t want to go?  In this episode, the caller is a program director at a diabetes...

We all know that how we experience our kid’s type 1 is very different from how the rest of the world sees us.  People on the outside might see us calmly dosing for a meal or picking up prescriptions at the pharmacy.  They have no idea that we’re up nights, checking the Dexcom through the day, or on the phone with insurance for hours on end. That said, sometimes people on the outside might have concerns about what they see.  Is their view accurate?  Hard to say.  But the question is how to...

Another mother coming on the show, concerned because she’s finding food wrappers and feels like her child is “sneaking food”?  Yes! But food and eating is such an important topic that I wanted to let you listen to lots of different ways you can think about and approach the issues if (and when) they come up with your T1D child.     In this episode, we meet a mom who has struggled with her own relationship with food and eating and hear about the ways she’s tried to create the conditions for her...

It’s so hard to stay level when you’re parenting – and adding type 1 to the mix can really turn up the temperature on feeling out of control.  In this week’s podcast, Annie and I talk together about a question from “Feeling out of control in Albuquerque” who is struggling with the anger that can sweep over her when something goes sideways with diabetes.   Annie and I both relate to this mom. We know what it’s like to feel like you’ve got the hang of this disease – that you can handle what it...

For many parents, with or without T1D, food triggers so much baggage and confusion. On the one hand, we want to serve what’s healthy and limit “junk” food. We also don’t want to be overly restrictive: We know that as children get older, it’s going to be up to them to start making their own smart choices.  And if we never give them chips or ice cream, there’s a good chance they’re going to opt for that when they finally have the chance. And how much more complicated is this when we fold type 1...

It is not an easy thing to let go of our kids as they grow up and become more independent. Having a T1D diagnosis only makes that process more difficult, and there is much anxiety, frustration, and fear in relinquishing diabetes management to other people. What if something happens and I’m not there? Will the caregiver know what to do? These questions flood our thoughts and can be paralyzing. Today’s question is from a mom who is experiencing a spectrum of emotions as the family prepares for...

Being skeptical and fearful of the new technology of an insulin pump is real for many T1D parents. Is it reliable? Will it do what it’s supposed to do? Annie, a friend and fellow T1D mom, joins us to read a listener question from “Resistant” in California. Join us! Show Highlights: Listener Question from “Resistant”: “I’m feeling a lot of pressure to put my six-year-old daughter on a pump, and I really don’t want to. The only downside to multiple daily injections for us is that the back of...