Newly diagnosed four year old

[Katharine Smith]

Welcome to the forum, Katherine Smith. Another vote for Nature Valley protein bars, either salted caramel or chocolate nut variety. So much nicer than the crunchy Nature Valley bars that were given to Games Makers (London 2012 volunteers). Like most GMs, I remember those bars were the only bad things about the experience. I was given some protein bars, both types, when working on UK Challenge in Devon a few weeks ago, and gave this feedback to a Nature Valley representative, who was slightly startled, but pleased, at dramatically improved opinion of their company's products!

It sounds like I'm going to have to try not to eat them all myself...

 

[Katharine Smith]

Hi Katharine, and welcome 🙂

Dark chocolate is good as a treat - best to check the carbs on something he'll eat, but I get Green & Blacks 85% cocoa and a couple of squares of that have very few carbs (obviously sugary milk chocolate is not such a good idea!). Sweets generally are best avoided, but one or two Tic-Tacs are pretty much carb-free. Nuts are good if he is OK with those, and I also eat plain TUC biscuits, which have 3g carbs each. Cheese is fine if you're not vegan, and mini pots of Petits Filous are pretty low in carbs too. I'd avoid dried fruit, as it sends blood sugar up very quickly (I sometimes use it to treat hypos), but if you can eventually get him onto things like tomatoes, I agree with Hobbie, they are a good idea.

Thank you - we're not vegan so not completely limited, thankfully - I made some banana muffins today which are very small and although have sugar, also have some flaxseed (in a bid to make me feel they were a bit healthier!) - not the most filling, but they are about 10g carbs each if I've done my maths right and it was good to let him have a little treat.
I hope he will become less fussy as he gets older 🙂

 

[Katharine Smith]

Remembered after I posted - can you get him to eat fruit, Katharine, or does he view that in the same way as vegetables? Fruit generally is too high in sugar for snacks without insulin, but berries are quite low. If you are able to grow things like strawberries & raspberries, a couple of those would make a good snack.

Thanks for these great ideas. He is really fussy, he likes banana (not great) and melon (not so bad) and refuses to try things like blueberries, which he used to enjoy. Let's hope it's a phase 🙂

 

[Martin Canty]

Hi Katherine,

I just took a quick look on a site I quite like & there are about 10 pages of snack recipes....

http://www.ruled.me/keto-recipes/snacks/

Also, if baking cookies etc then wheat flour alternatives like Almond or Coconut flour might be a good alternative, additionally, if the recipe calls for sugar then Stevia is quite acceptable.

 

[bilbie]

I would ask your health team about doing a T1 course.

Sick Day Rules for when illness strikes is also worth getting before hand from the health team, than trying to find out at 4 in the morning with the child not well
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.ispad.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/CPCG_2014_CHAP_13.pdf

 

[Redkite]

Welcome to the forum Katherine, sorry to hear about your little boy's type 1 - my son was also 4 when he was diagnosed, and strangely one of the silver linings was that (because they are literally starving on diagnosis) he was suddenly willing to try any kind of new food. Almost overnight he went from being a typical fussy preschooler to a child who would eat the most exotic foods. So have you actually tried giving your son foods that he previously rejected?

Not sure what specific advice you've been given, but if he's allowed a small amount of carbs in a snack, you could try a Jaffa cake (8.5g), rice cakes, popcorn, raspberries, strawberries, a mini pack of chocolate buttons (I think the mini treat size ones are about 8g of carb), those smoothie tubes or yoghurt tubes (about 5g carb). Also, the Organix range of baby/toddler food does some date and banana bars which are 9 or 10g of carb, we used to get those from time to time.