How to handle meds on school trip
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Anonymous
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My 12 year old son will be traveling with his orchestra for a music “exchange”, and staying with another family for two nights. How do we handle his ADHD and anxiety medication? He’s excited about the trip, I may be over thinking this…. But I don’t trust him to take it himself, he barely remembers to take it when I give it to him at home.
Do I try to get in touch with the host family and explain the situation? Reach out to his orchestra director and ask them to handle it? I’m thinking I’ll get one of those pill boxes and put in the medication for am and pm. How do other parents handle medication when you’re not there to give it? |
Anonymous
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A pill box is a great idea. Contact the organizer first, and if you can also contact the host, even better. Will he reliably answer his phone? You can set reminders on his phone, and call him to double check that he took his meds. Impress upon him that it's very important not to double the dose. If he thinks he took his dose already but isn't sure, he has to assume he took it! But he'll have the pill box, so there's less worries from that quarter.
My kid had an overnight trip for Model UN at that age, and he had to carry his Epipen and take his ADHD meds. I was so anxious about a potential nut fiasco, given his extreme inattentiveness and tendency to just grab whatever snacks, that we traveled to the destination (couldn't chaperone) and I made sure not to be too far away. It was his first trip away from home. Now he's in college and studying in Europe. We've come a long way 
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Anonymous
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Schools usually have pretty clear guidelines about how they expect medication to be handled. Kids carrying their own medication, other than emergency meds like epi pens, glucagon, and inhalers, is generally illegal.
I would contact the school, and ask them how to handle it. At our school, the person to ask would be the school nurse. |
Anonymous
| Anxiety for what? He’s 12. |
Anonymous
Not an appropriate reply in the special needs forum. |
Anonymous
| Thank you for the helpful replies. I agree the school nurse would be the person, but they won't be traveling with this small group. But yes, a good reminder for me that he's not the first student to face this situation, and I'm sure there is a school policy in place. I'll find out what that policy is. |
Anonymous
| At 12 he needs to start taking on that self responsibility. He can set alarms on his phone / watch. You can text him as a reminder. He needs to be part of his own treatment management at 12. He is likely capable of a lot more than you think he is, when he has the responsibility. |
Anonymous
It's an exchange program, so they might do things differently than when they're at school. You want to ask the program organizer. They've dealt with this before. |
Anonymous
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Haven't had an overnight with school but my 11 year old has had all day trips and we coordinated meds with the school. We had to fill out a particular form and then they made the chaperone responsible to remind him but he carried it himself.
For over night sleepovers I tell the hosting parents about the medicine schedule. But I tell my son to be responsible to remember to take it. He carries a pill box with am and pm sides. He doesn't have a phone and not sure that he would be ready for it next year. These "text him" responses are making me cringe a bit. Many adhd kids cant handle phones. And this is a 6th or 7th grader, Im not sure all nuerotypical kids can either. Dont love that solution. |
Anonymous
+1 OP this is not for you to arrange on a personal basis. Adults chaperoning the school trip will be responsible. If this means they will need to coordinate with the host families, it means they will be coordinating with the host families. Make sure you have filled out your school district's form for medications to be administered. In MCPS this form must be signed by the prescribing doctor. |
Anonymous
| Your DC is not ready for this trip. It’s not reasonable or even viable for a host family or a chaperone to remind him to take medicine. If he can’t, via an alarm, then he’s not ready for this. |
Anonymous
The school nurse doesn’t go on the trips at our school. They make the arrangements. They figure out which adult to designate and make up forms for us to check off. |
Anonymous
There's some leeway there. If I were a host family, I wouldn't mind at all dealing with his meds. One of my kids was on Adderall for years, and my other kid has daily medication for her auto-immune disease. I've sent my kid to birthday parties where the host immediately asked "Epipen? Allergies?" because they were doctors or teachers and were used to dealing with that stuff. Not all parents are going to be clueless. OP just needs to ask the organizers and go from there. |
Anonymous
OP here - interesting, would you say the same thing about a child with an EpiPen or diabetes? |
Anonymous
Op again - 100% agree, I’m an Anxious Generation Johnathan Haidt supporter. He is not ready for a smart phone and does not have one. Most of his friends don’t have one either. I do think we can set alarms on his watch though. |