Support for the Family of a Child with Type 1 Diabetes

A diagnosis of type 1 diabetes is not given to the child alone; to a large extent, it is given to the whole family. In a single day, habits, sleep, plans and the way parents relate to one another and to their child are all changed.

Your diabetologist helps you with blood glucose, insulin and medical devices; decisions about treatment remain theirs. But what happens psychically to the parents, to the child, to the siblings and to the couple, once vigilance becomes permanent and the illness settles at the centre of family life?

As a psychologist and a father, after twelve years of type 1 diabetes in my own child, I am here to help you cross this trial.

Areas of work

Receiving the diagnosis and the work of acceptance

The diagnosis produces a rupture. There is a “before” and an “after”. Parents often describe something close to mourning — for the healthy child they believed they had, for the life they had imagined. It is a real loss, and it needs time and a setting in which it can be spoken, without anyone rushing “acceptance”.

Reorganising family life

Food, schedules, holidays, sport, going out — everything passes through the filter of a permanent calculation. This reorganisation carries a psychic cost that is rarely acknowledged, because efficiency masks it: the family functions, so it appears to be fine.

The couple

A child's chronic illness places a specific pressure on the parental couple. Roles divide — one parent becomes “the technical one”, the other “the emotional one”; silent reproaches about vigilance appear; exhaustion erodes intimacy. Now more than ever, protecting the couple is no longer a luxury, but one of the essential conditions for the family to endure over time.

Medical devices and the child's body

Sensors, pumps and artificial pancreas systems change life for the better, but they also raise a difficult question: what does it mean for a child, and especially for an adolescent, to permanently wear a visible object that marks them as different? The relationship with one's own body, with self-image, with the gaze of others and with their (non-)acceptance creates a significant inner conflict, one that has to be worked through.

Sleep, monitoring and the fear of hypoglycaemia

Interrupted nights, alarms, checks — the fear of hypoglycaemia installs in parents a state of alertness that does not subside even when everything is under control. This permanent hypervigilance has real effects on the parent's mental health and, indirectly, on the child, who perceives and internalises it.

School, exclusion and bullying

A child with diabetes is visible, is different. They check their blood glucose often, eat at unusual times, wear devices, are sometimes absent. Exclusion, teasing and at times bullying follow. We work both with the child's experience and with the parent's position in relation to the school.

Adolescent autonomy

Handing responsibility from parent to adolescent is one of the most delicate moments. Adolescence requires separation, while the illness demands control; the conflict between these two needs can become intense, sometimes producing revolt against the treatment. It is a stage in which it is worth having a psychologist alongside you.

Who this is for

• Parents and parental couples - individually or together, to elaborate experiences that have nowhere else to be spoken, and to address the specific tensions that arise after diagnosis
• Children and adolescents - for their relationship with the illness, the body and others
• Siblings - the children who often remain in the background, in a family organised around a permanent emergency

What my experience consists of

My training is that of a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in training. To this is added the experience of being the parent of a child diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of five and now in adolescence — twelve years of living with this reality, from the first sleepless nights to the negotiation of autonomy.

This experience does not replace professional competence, but it changes the quality of the listening. You will not have to explain from scratch what an alarm at three in the morning means, what happens before a school trip, or why a conversation about a sensor can turn into a conflict about freedom.

The setting

Sessions last 45 minutes and take place at the practice or online. The first meeting is devoted to understanding the family's situation and deciding together on the appropriate form of work: individually, as a couple, or alternating.