If you have children, you probably know how challenging it can be getting them to take the medicine they need, even in the various bubblegum-flavored options, it’s still a fight no matter how sick they are. No matter how sick they are, they act as if you were trying to poison them. Can you blame them? Even something that’s supposed to taste “better” has a chemical bite to it as well. They put a cartoon character on the box, and hope for the best.
Anyway, one mom – Joelle Smithmier Dew – figured out a solution. Not that she is just a mom, she’s also a pharmacist, so she could essentially be the double agent in this scenario. And what she does is… she just puts the medication in a chocolate caramel coffee creamer from Hershey’s. That’s it. No magic. No tricks. Just creamer.
She said she usually puts in around four tablespoons – not just a drop or two – and apparently that is enough to completely mask the taste. Even for something as nasty as Tamiflu – if you ever smelled Tamiflu, or better yet tasted it, then you know what I mean. She swears that her kids drink it right down with no complaints.
Also, before anyone goes “Oh my god, I’m giving my kids coffee,” there are no coffee products in these creamers. No caffeine or anything. Just syrupy, flavored, cream goo. It’s basically dessert. It makes sense, right? Mask grossness with sugar. Generally speaking, that’s how adult life works too.
So, if you were going to get the usual fight, and bargaining and begging to chase your child around the kitchen with the dosing syringe… maybe don’t do that. Just try the creamer first. Joelle seems pretty adamant about it – and if it works with Tamiflu, I’m guessing it would probably work for everything.
Now if your child is too small for something like that – as in a baby baby, who isn’t going to drink chocolate caramel creamer from a spoon – apparently there is another trick with a pacifier. Which… makes sense? We will talk about that in a second, but yes, there is a hack for that too.
