10 Helpful Tips to Get Your Child to Take Their Medicine

We asked our MoM’s for their tips on how to get your child to take their medicine when they are feeling unwell and refuse to swallow anything? Here are the top 10 answers.

Last year one mums clever tip to get infants to take their medicine went viral. The UK Mum shared how she inserted the syringe of medicine through the drinking hole of a bottle lid and posted a snap of her baby boy happily drinking it. Read her post HERE.

bub medicine tip mf

Our clever MoM’s have recommended some other great techniques including:

Medicine first, teaspoon of Nutella after (unless allergic to nuts)
Squeeze checks, insert medication and blow in their face. When you blow they swallow. Takes a second and then give them juice or their favorite drink. Do not squeeze too hard.
Mix it with a tiny bit of soft drink. They will assume its a treat, works for my kids
Pinch their nose (gently)
Babies: stick the syringe into the side of their cheek near the back while having them semi sitting up and give small bits at a time. (Less likely to vomit).
Little kids: give them something they like to eat or drink in plain view for you to give them directly after they take the meds. (This works better if they are usually denied any sort of treats usually).
Older kids: Pills opened up into a cut banana stuck back together. (They know it’s there, it just makes it easier to swallow).
You can also use a dummy on smaller babies, cut a hole in the back of the dummy, put medicine in the teat, baby will suck happily without issue and you can see that all Medicine has been consumed!!!
Piece of ice before and after to numb the mouth and the taste a bit.
Use a suppository if nothing else works.

Read all the tips on our Facebook discussion.

Share your tips below.

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19 Comments

- - meedee said
  - 30 Jun 2022
    9:14 pm
Some of the medicines they hated the taste of but they took them anyway as I always explained that it tasted yuck but would help them to feel better.

- - ella12 said
  - 29 Jul 2019
    2:54 pm
We’ve never really had a problem with this.

- - DaffyD said
  - 23 Jul 2019
    8:43 am
Thanks for the hints my daughter is fine but my son loves spitting panadol out

- - mom101628 said
  - 21 Jul 2019
    11:11 pm
Never had any issue with children taking the medication required, but this is a clever way of making sure the child takes sometimes bad-tasting medicine. Thanks for sharing.

- - rovermum said
  - 17 Jul 2019
    9:18 am
We were lucky and never had an issue. Through the syring and quickly does it. My sister-in-law used to ridiculously put medicine in her daughter’s bottle with coca cola. I was horrified that ANYONE would think this was okay and would work.

- - sars_angelchik said
  - 16 Jul 2019
    11:01 am
I don’t think anything would have worked on my boy- he hates most fruit and most medicines are fruit flavoured so he just spat everything! He’s a bit better now he’s older but still difficult.

- - MisChip said
  - 15 Jul 2019
    10:47 pm
Great tips. I’m struggling with my 7 month old atm!

- - nealsq said
  - 15 Jul 2019
    8:42 pm
my son is taking his antibiotics really well so far but he is hating the ear drops, must feel a bit funny to him

- - Blossom said
  - 12 Apr 2019
    7:21 pm
For a cough which also causes pain or anything thing that causes a high temperatur eI know a toddler who is given 2 options – liquid or suppository

- - june11 said
  - 10 Apr 2018
    5:22 am
Some of those medicines are cherry flavoured (doesn’t taste like cherry to me) and taste revolting. (I spilt some on my finger).
Make sure they can knock your hand away when you are giving them medicine – including in a syringe. Find a way of holding their hands down or wrap baby with arms down.

- - ella12 said
  - 09 Apr 2018
    2:41 pm
Some useful tips here, thank you.

- - sars_angelchik said
  - 05 Apr 2018
    9:11 am
Some good tricks! My son hates fruit so he was particularly hard to give medicine to as a baby (thankfully he hasn’t been sick since then so I haven’t had to worry) and as the medicine for his congestion was fruit flavoured he would spit it out and dry retch. The only thing I was remotely successful with was mixing it into his weet-bix!

- - Ellen said
  - 04 Apr 2018
    3:45 am
I haven’t had too much problems taking meds with my kids. With my youngest it was at times a bit of z battle, which I avoided by buying suppositories. However my friends daughter (she’s 13yr old now) was and still is dreadful in taking meds. Total drama and refusal and none of these tips work. Her mum even promised her once $10 for each time she took her antibiotics ! Count it out, 3× a day = $30 × 7days = $210 !!
- mom90758 replied
  
  04 Apr 2018 , 3:19 pm
  That’s crazy! It doesn’t look like a good way to handle the situation!!
  - Ellen replied
    
    06 Apr 2018 , 3:36 am
    
    I know, I agree…not good at all !
- - ashna9 said
  - 03 Apr 2018
    9:12 pm
I use salt and vinegar chips for my 9 and 7 year old. The taste is strong enough to get rid of the medicine taste.

- - mom206279 said
  - 03 Apr 2018
    8:37 pm
Just bribery and a bit at a time. And lots of praise after its done no matter how much fuss and screaming happened during the process.