My son needs his medicines crushed (he has a very active gag reflex). We have found custard yogurt to work really well. And for meds that can't be given with dairy products, berry sorbet works great. SwallowEasy—product recommendation. Ty (6) recently diagnosed with ADHD was first put on Adderall X®. This is a capsule that can be opened and sprinkled but wasn't working for him. The doctor changed his medication to Concerta®, a caplet that has to be swallowed whole (not crushed or chewed). After spending 30 minutes one morning and an hour the next, I tried SwallowEasy®. It worked on the first try! Pharmacies now can flavor liquid meds. There are about 20 choices and isn't overly expensive. I hope this helps someone. I plan to use it in my daughter's barium this week. Joshua, 3½ at time of diagnoses (4 now), swallows pills. I crush them and put them into empty gel capsules (sizes #3 & #4—they are very small). I'm so proud of him. It sure makes taking prednisone and all the rest of the meds so much easier. Thank God. My grandson Justin is 2½ and he takes his meds crushed and mixed with orange or grape juice with a glass of juice ready for a chaser. He also likes to hold me down while he takes his meds through a syringe. I was unable to swallow pills until I was in my mid teens. It wasn't that I had a phobia about them or anything, I just found that if I placed anything small in my mouth and then took a drink to try and swallow it, it just wouldn't go down. The trick that finally worked for me is as follows: Stand in front of a mirror and open your mouth, then stick out your tongue. Place the pill on your tongue and then using your index finger shove the pill backwards as far as you can manage without it feeling too uncomfortable. Then withdraw your tongue back into your mouth and take a drink. Because the pill is now at the rear of your tongue it will slip down your throat instead of just swilling around inside your mouth. My son had a terrible time getting pills down—he would choke and spit them back up. We finally found that we could hide them in a spoonful of applesauce — he didn't even notice them. That was the end of it. When Jordyn was first diagnosed with AML, we couldn't get her to take her meds. One day, my husband started being "He-Man!" He would lift his arm up with the syringe of medicine and say, " I've got the power!" and then ask Jordyn if she wanted the power. We are not sure if she "wanted the power" or if she just wanted to watch us act silly. Either way it worked and now we don't have that problem, even with the yukky meds. She has been at this for 10 months and we thought she did great! She isn't even 2 yet! :) Morgan got prednisone pills down by coating them in applesauce (plain, not cinnamon—she was somewhat adamant about that). She explained very articulately that ice cream works, but you have to get it at j u s t the right consistency. Too hard and the pill is too hard to swallow; too soft and it doesn't coat it enough. Applesauce does the trick. If you're having trouble getting them to swallow pills, set limits: Give the choice of juice, water, or pop. And, take it now or in 10 minutes. Have child wet mouth first with so pills won't stick. We have a stainless steel pill crusher we recieve from a pharmacist friend. It crushes it to a fine powder. Mixed with a couple tsps. of milk work great. We even take it to the hospital with us. Whenever we have to apply the EMLA® cream, I use the Nexcare® bandages. It seals on all four sides so the cream stays in and the ones with pictures look like tattoos when applied. There are dinosaurs, dalmations, animals, flowers, etc. Nicholas likes to use the dinosaurs if he's really nervous, especially if they are "sharp teeth". Plus, I usually buy them on sale for less than $2.00 a box. One of the sizes are too small for EMLA crea so those are saved for Nick's siblings boo-boos. Tyler was age 5 at dx for AML. He had not yet learned to swallow pills and the liquids were awful tasting. To get around this he practiced swallowing with mini M&Ms® . Once he got that down we moved on to gummy bears. Now I cut the gummies open part way with a knife, insert his pill and reseal the gummy. Down it goes. My son, Collin, was 4½ when dx w/ ALL. He'd never swallowed a pill in his life, but he did take liquids so we weren't too worried. But, when he had to take a liquid stool softener, he fought like the devil! Clamped his mouth shut & hid his face! It got to a point where he threw up the moment he swallowed it. (I tried a drop on my tongue and was instantly nauseous!) Anyway, I wasn't going to make him swallow 10cc's of that stuff anymore so I got it in liquid gelcap form and since he likes yogurt, started hiding it in there. (He likes me to feed him sometimes, so this wasn't a big deal.) Until the day that Mom got busted! He said "What are you doing, Mom? I can't swallow a pill!!" I told him he'd been doing it twice a day for two weeks. After he thought about, he said "OK". Now we get all of his meds in pill form and he decides which one goes into the yogurt first! Bribery was an oft-repeated tactic: Well, we promised our daughter a puppy if she took all of her meds....that worked! for us Häagen Dazs® vanilla ice cream worked the best . make it like a sandwich (medicine in between of two layers of ice cream) Our only bad one is Senekot®—now we mix it with chocolate syrup We put our 6 year old son, Blake's, pills in bites of pizza or grilled cheese and he quickly follows them with a Pepcid AC®! I am twenty years old and still shudder at the thought of taking prednisone before each of my surgeries. I have to take it twelve, six, and one hour before. Twelve hours before, I can eat something afterwards so that's what I do. Six hours before is hard because all I can have is clear liquids. I take it will apple juice and also brush my teeth before and after. One hour before is the hardest. They just give me the littlest bit of water and I shudder for a while. It takes a lot of encouragement, but eventually I brush my teeth and keep some toothpaste in my mouth and swallow the pill at the same time then I brush my teeth again and then use mouthwash then I listen to my CDs til I go to surgery to keep my mind off the taste in my mouth. We have discovered a product called "SwallowAid®" which is a gel that masks medication's taste and lubricates the mouth & throat for pill taking. Easy to use and kids love the taste.

A friend of mine used to teach developmentally-disabled kids to swallow pills gave my 5-year-old daughter a lesson on how do it and it has worked well for us: Sit with good posture and feet supported (knees and hips at 90 degrees--I had her sit on the stairs at home so her feet would touch the ground). It is okay to spit out, especially if the gag reflex is activated (this helps establish a sense of security). Practice the "t" sound (with tongue behind upper teeth) before taking the pill. This is the tongue tip position needed to activate the swallow reflex. Place capsule or pill on back of tongue (as far as comfortable) and take a gulp of water. Quickly, close mouth and place tongue in back of top front teeth (as if to make the "t" sound) and swallow. (Should elicit swallow reflex.) Kids that want to can kind of crane their necks out and then back while swallowing, sort of a turtle- coming-out-of-the-shell motion. My 6-year-old daughter recently had to start taking Concerta® which is a capsule. After trying many things, we finally bought some ready to serve Jello® in the refrigerator section of the store and inserted the pill in a spoonful—it slid right down! We also tried it with cream cheese but, somehow, she could feel the pill with her tongue and would not swallow it. This was a lifesaver for us, we were getting very frustrated and running out of ideas to try!! When my 3 yr old was puking up the crushed prednisone pills, I knew I had to figure out a way to get him to swallow them whole. I found the answer: Put the pill (whole) in a teaspoon of pudding and it will slide right down. By age 4, he was able to swallow pills without any pudding. (Too bad he can't teach his sisters to swallow pills too. Do you know how many chewable Tylenol® a 12 year old takes?) We have never had any problems with Brianna taking her meds. Since day one we have crushed them with a pill crusher, dissolved with a little water, and added cherry syrup....Ta-Da and she just takes it ....The cherry syrup tastes pretty good... Tammy Our son, Drew, was diagnosed with ALL just after turning 5 years old. He did well with most of the pills except for the prednisone. No matter what we tried it didn't work better than 50% of the time. What made it difficult was the fact he wasn't fond of sweets. Chocolate sauce, ice cream, and whipped topping were among the many he wouldn't try it with. Part of the problem was that the pill was just a bit too large to swallow and cutting it in half made it dissolve quicker. Our solution was to get the doctors to prescribe smaller pills (a two for one swap) and drop the pill in a teaspoon of milk. He would take the pill and quickly swallow some more milk. He says he can't even taste them anymore! Although we haven't tried it, we sure chocolate milk would work the same way. When Joshua was only three, we would put his meds in a spoonful of peanut butter; at four, he learned to take them with milk. We would let him move to one new spot to take his meds—I believe it made feel like he had some control of the process. Parents have shared that snow cone syrup or thick juice from can of peaches or pears works great to help the pills slide down. Also, try concealing the pill inside small piece of canned peaches so that it's the fruit touching the tonque which slides right down. Nicholas, 2½, was diagnosed with ALL just this last May. We crush his decadron/or 6mp and mix with chocolate syrup. I draw up each syringe of medicine and then an extra syringe of cold water. The deal is: he can shoot whoever he wants to with the water when he's done with his meds. We then laugh and laugh. Usually it's me who gets the drenching. Sheila When our son, Wesley, who is four, is on "Prednisone Week" (only two more left!), we crush it up and sandwich it between two hunks of ice cream on a spoon. He takes one big bite and then we "chase it" with a few Hershey Kisses® to kill the taste!! My son Jacob is 3yrs. old and we crush up his 6mp pill and put it in YooHoo® chocolate drink he loves it, it doesn't work for everything though Funny now, but not then. Ryan was diagnosed with ALL when he was three. After the first week in the hospital, we couldn't get him to take his meds at home. We had to take him to the doctor and wound up sitting in the exam room for 8 hours trying to shove prednisone in everything we could think of—he'd throw it up everytime. Finally, he was admitted to the hospital again and stayed for almost a month because he threw up his meds. I realized that if he drank a full glass of juice after the meds, that he wouldn't throw up...we finally got out of the hospital. By the way, Ryan is 10 and has been in remission for 7years. My son was 3 months old when he was diagnosed with ALL; needless to say, he could not swallow pills. He spit out the liquid prednisone (and who could blame him—have you tasted it?). I crushed a pill and hid it in a small spoonful of baby food bananas, but do it quick or the banana gets bitter too. Now there is a way to mask the awful flavor of Prednisone: It was developed by FlavoRxTM and comes in many flavors! My sister says it has changed her life as well as her daughters. Ask your pharmacist if they have the FlavoRx. Even though we have EMLA cream to numb the site, sometimes Bryanna would not want to get her needle put in until I asked her to sing a song while the nurse was doing it. Now she sings "ooh eee ooh ahh ahh ting tang walla walla bing bang," an oldie currently remade in The Rugrats Movie. Now it's no problem.-- Alexa calls Prednisone "butter medicine" because she takes her medicine in a lump of butter to hide the taste and make it go down a little easier. Kyle, age 5, very recently diagnosed with leukemia, had never swallowed a pill until he was forced to take crushed prednisone (ugh!. After two or three days of shuttering and worse after taking his pills, I told him he had to keep taking them crushed in pudding, etc., or I would teach him to swallow a pill. The next morning, he decided to learn. He watched me take a vitamin and practiced on an orange Tic Tac®, which, thankfully, went right down! Weeks later, he asked for a gel cap, which he'd used for Senna, to put his prednisone in, and he fit all seven pills into one gel cap and swallowed them down. It makes one little aspect of life much easier! Our daughter Jenny (dob 10/26/94) was diagnosed with ALL in September, 1998, and in the beginning, giving her medication was a horror. We started to practice with her swallowing M&Ms® and bought empty gel capsules to put all her medication in. It has worked great! She has always hated Septra so we started giving her Septra tablets—she is much happier with that situation. There is also a product on the market called "FlavoRX" which a friend told us about. Your pharmacist should be able to get you information on it. Joey, 6 at the time of Dx could not swallow pills. We found that microwaving a Starburst® candy for about 10 seconds let us wrap it around the pills. If they don't go down the first time, try and try again and no after-taste! My son has to take a lot of pills because of his bone marrow transplant and we have found that if we "ice" the pills with icing they go down much easier [especially the buffered ones] and he gets a laugh out of my hands being covered with icing. Samantha, 6, did not like her medicine. We tried crushing the pills and mixing them in with juice, ice cream, etc. would help, but she still hated it because they all "smelled bad," so I tried a new approach: I told her that if she would just place the pill on her tongue and pretend it was a pebble, then water she drank would be the river that would wash the pebble away--like a little rock going over a waterfall! It worked and she's been swallowing her pills ever since. (Now if I could only get her brothers to do the same!) Incidentally, none of her pills had odors. Hmph. Marlene S. We mix Kevin's medicine with chocolate syrup. Now he's the only kid in the neighborhood that hates chocolate syrup, but he does take it and then washes it down with milk. After fighting with my three year old son for days trying to get him to take prednisone, we found that if we mixed the crushed pill with frozen raspberry juice concentrate, the cold temperature and strong raspberry flavour overpowered the worst of the the "yukky" pill flavour. After many trips back to the hospital to get my son, Christopher, to take his prednisone we came up with the perfect recipe. He coated his tongue with melted chocolate while I crushed his pills in a little medicine cup. I then added a spoon of chocolate ice cream and a little bit of pop and "walla!" Magic potion made. It worked and we haven't needed another trip to the hospital to have prednisone forced in. After my daughter's BMT, she had tons (I do mean tons!) of meds to take several times a day. With her being only 12 months old, it was a true battle. I found by using a 1cc syringe rather than larger one, I was able to get the meds further back in her cheek. This helped quite a bit. Although bear in mind, it is more time consuming and you still must keep the cheek retracted with your index finger to prevent the inevitable! Nonetheless, Good luck! Hannah's MOM Tate, 4yrs. old, gets to choose which of his meds he takes first. This gives him a little bit of control, but he knows that the medicine has to be taken without any question. A spoonful of Cool Whip® with the pill hidden inside has always worked in our family. I pick up a tub when I fill the prescription. My kids think it's a special treat and it works wonderfully. Giancarlo (3) hated to take prednisone. He is a very picky child who hates candy ice cream and anything other 3-year-olds might like. After suffering for days and on the verge of being hospitalized again, I sat down with him and showed him how mommy takes her pills (vitamins). Can you believe that he learned to swallow the medicine!!!!! Jessi takes liquid medicines—some are particularly dreadful, such as Lortab (vicodin) (tastes kinda like Nyquil® mixed with tequila!). We have found that a popsicle before med time freezes her mouth so she can't taste the medicine!!!