School Birthday Parties

My daughter was diagnosed with T1D in April at 4 years old. She recently turned 5 and is starting kindergarten. An unexpected issue for us has been how to handle classroom birthday parties where the standard is cupcakes. The parties are not at a meal time. Any suggestions on how to navigate this from those with experience would be super appreciated.

Hello Brittany,

My Daughter Bella also was diagnosed at 4 years old right before kindergarten. This is a tough question to answer because every parent shares a different belief on sweets for their T1 kid. We decided just to let her have the cupcake because we didn’t want her to feel left out. What we did in order for her not to go way high was to check her sugar before hand, bolus 15 minutes before she has the cupcake and most of the time her sugars were fine after that. Also usually juice seemed to be the standard so we would pack her with a sugar free lemonade as well. If you have any other questions please let me know.

-Manny

My son’s teachers know to tell me ahead of time if they know about treats in the classroom so I can bring something less carb-rich for him. But many times we (and the teachers) are surprised by treats showing up. I’ve told my son’s teacher to go ahead and give him the treat (or at least half if it’s a really large cupcake for example), and we’ll deal with the highs at the next meal time. I too don’t want my son to feel ‘left out.’