Pediatric dietitian shares how to teach kids to swallow pills and parents 'absolutely love' it

Bringing up kids is probably a tougher job than carrying them for nine months in the womb. From their diets to their pretend play, everything must happen under the watchful eyes of their parents. A child’s prime years are the ones when they're learning the difference between choices presented to them in life. One such major decision is that of food. While Halloween is a free pass for all kids to binge eat their candy, knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods has become of prime importance to parents. Addressing all concerns related to toddler eating habits, pediatric dietitian Jennifer Anderson (@kids.eat.in.color) delighted her Instagram family by sharing a helpful video on how to get children to swallow pills, even the big ones. 

Anderson’s step-by-step Instagram video captures the learning progress of her seven-year-old son, who successfully practices swallowing pills. The steps followed in the video are based on the program "How to Swallow Pills" by Dr. J Kaplan, Ph.D. The five steps are designed to get those who struggle with swallowing pills, to cross that bridge confidently. There are two preparatory tasks to be done before the five-step method of swallowing the pills. First, is to get your child to watch an educational video. Second, is to make a tracking sheet with different facial expressions which can describe the child’s comfort level and record your child’s progress in learning to swallow pills, every day.

Once these two tasks are completed, the video moves on to the step-by-step method. Step one is to "put candy on the tongue", step two is to take "a small sip of water", step three is to "'Duck shake' to get the pill to the back of the throat", step four is to "move head to one of five positions while swallowing (tilt head to right, left, up and down)" and the final step it to swallow.

Anderson’s Instagram video shows her seven-year-old beginning his practice with candy, following the duck shake, practicing all five head positions, recording his comfort level on his tracking sheet and following this practice routine for 14 nights straight. The video text said that there were some nights of no swallows but at the end of the 14 days, her son was able to challenge himself with a bigger pill to see “how big of a pill he could swallow.” Sure enough, the youngster succeeded and proudly gave a thumbs-up at the end of the video.

The comments section of this interesting and educational video was filled with acknowledgments and affirmations about the video being the need of the hour, even for some of the adults who struggle with swallowing pills.  @smrker418 wrote: "I absolutely love this! I taught my daughter using rice. Take one piece put it on your tongue and drink your water to make it disappear! Now I don’t have to worry about getting meds into her when she’s sick. #momwin." @jjensen024 wrote, “Needed this. Do you have tips on teaching little ones to blow their nose?” @stacey5995 said, “Super impressed. It took me until 9th grade to learn! I kept throwing water into my face.” @texas_twinmom_16 added: "This is so crazy, I was just thinking about this morning! Had to give my almost 7 year olds liquid meds this morning. They hate it...Definitely saving this video."