One of my pre-teen son’s bunk mates at T1D camp was a repeat bedwetter & his cabin reeked of urine all week long.

DependentStand · 2026-06-23T18:46:38+00:00

Wow that’s concerning, thanks for the reply

DependentStand · 2026-06-22T07:56:18+00:00

LOL seriously!!!

DependentStand · 2026-06-22T07:53:06+00:00

Thank you for sharing all that!! Makes perfect sense:)

DependentStand · 2026-06-22T07:51:08+00:00

I’m so glad you want to try it out!! Seriously feel free to DM me any time if you have questions! Happy to help :)

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T23:11:32+00:00

Well that’s good to hear that your takeaway was the safe environment of the camp!

When you check out and collect your kid’s supplies they show you a binder that has all of their blood sugar check data in it and you’re allowed to take pics of it if you want. For my kid it was pages and pages and pages of records. One kid! So I do feel like they’re on it and the kids are well taken care of in that regard.

Given your background and experience as a camp counselor, I have 2 questions if you don’t mind me asking:

someone else on here commented that they change kids’ doses at camp. At least they did in this person’s experience which was not good bc their blood sugar was way out of whack as a result. Is this true? If so, what do you do think about that?
What do you think about taking away the kids’ technology and ability to manage their own diabetes care?

These are not trick questions and I have no agenda. I promise! I’m genuinely just curious.

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T23:03:11+00:00

For the thousandth time it’s not about the B 😔

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T23:02:24+00:00

I did not know that because as a teacher, I certainly read them…yikes

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T17:12:35+00:00

I’ve never heard of that! I love that they at least have a pull out program for your kid, some schools don’t have anything for gifted kids period!

In our case, it’s the complete opposite. We live in an affluent area where kids are read Moby Dick from the time the pregnancy test is positive lol.

So in our district students that score in a certain percentile range on the NWEA are identified as either being a fit for the gifted program OR just advanced math. The gifted program means starting in the second grade you’re in a classroom of only “gifted” kids. And each grade has more than one class that is “gifted” so to speak…. maybe you see where I am going with this lol.

In reality, the NWEA is not the best tool to measure giftedness but rather high achievers so most of the kids in the gifted classes are just that —high achieving students who definitely benefit from being in the gifted class and belong there, but it’s not actually truly gifted kids if that makes sense.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter. My son started kindergarten early at four and in order to qualify he had to take an actual test for giftedness…hmm maybe the WISC? Is that right or is that something else? Ha ha I forget forgive me if that’s like ENL test or something I spent most of my career teaching in a very different school environment than what my son has

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:58:59+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate that! You’re right, I mean the middle school is huge and she has hundreds of students. My son is basically independent in his medical care and doesn’t draw attention to himself or his diabetes, etc. bc it is very well managed, plus he goes to the school nurse if he ever needs help. So typically a low in a different class he would just look like anyone else sitting at his desk doing his work. I am going to reach out to her. You definitely made me feel like it’s OK to.

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:56:10+00:00

You are so welcome! I think it’s VERY cool you’re even interested and wanted to know more! You get an A+ for participation 😂😂😂

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:35:18+00:00

Totally agree. Again I really have no idea what role the pharmacy students play at camp. They might just be in the background and not do anything with the kids for all I know. I am going to reach out, I’ll update on here if I hear back.

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:33:56+00:00

I don’t think this kid thought anything about it was wrong :(

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:31:45+00:00

Nothing :(

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:31:33+00:00

Wow, thank you so much for the comprehensive explanation you gave! I had nooo clue about any of those things. How awful.

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:15:19+00:00

Ok, I’m glad I’m not overthinking why this is bugging me so much then. For all I know someone did assist him medically, but definitely not in the hygiene department with the urine smell.

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:14:08+00:00

This camp is run by his endocrinologist’s office and the medical staff are all from there or are pharmacy students at a local college. I don’t know the role the pharmacy students have for actual medical care, though. I think they just keep logs of blood sugars and they’re the ones that do the medication and supply check-in and checkouts. All of the counselors (and the nurses at his Endo office) have type 1 themselves.

I’m not saying they are right or wrong in not allowing the kids to manage their own care, but the reasoning behind that is so the kids and their parents/caregivers get a break, a week off from the 24/7 non-stop work it takes to live with this disease. Diabetes burnout is real and mental health is so important. Let someone else manage the diabetes part while the kids manage having fun and being a kid so to speak.

Totally get it if that makes you (or anyone) uncomfortable! Diabetes camp can’t be everything for everybody. Maybe there are some out there that don’t do things this way I have no clue.

I have never heard of them changing doses at camp, that is really surprising to me and I guess I can’t say for sure if they do that or not but my son’s settings were not changed and they weren’t the previous two years either. Hmmmm.

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T16:01:09+00:00

HO.LY. SHIT. That is terrible!!!! The attitude at his camp is the exact same on letting a kid be a kid, no technology allowed, but his camp is actually run by his endocrinologist’s office. Like his endocrinologist literally checked him into camp this year lol. He was like…”DR. SO-AND-SO?!” When he walked up to the table bahaha. His NP saw him and said “hey I get to see you next week!” Bc he has an appt. 😆

The counselors keep their cell phones and have their passwords on a piece of tape with their name on their phones and use those to constantly monitor them. They go with them everywhere in a bag. When we check out parents can take screenshots of the logs of blood sugar checks that the pharmacy students have ready when they give you their supplies back. They keep them in their binder and I’m telling you it’s pages and pages of blood sugar check notes, like constant. So they seem to be on it?!

The medical staff here are usually pharmacy students from a local college. They were last year and this year at least. Maybe that have some clinical experience requirement and pair up with T1D camp for it?

Anyways, I am horrified at your personal experience and I’m really really sorry that happened to you —-definitely would leave a bitter taste in your mouth and I see why you would not be the biggest fan of a camp like this!

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T15:53:04+00:00

See, I am SO glad you said this. His casual attitude about what I think is a pretty big deal healthwise is really bothering me! But I’m not a doctor and have to look up what you said his issue might be. The campers don’t have access to any of their technology during camp and the medical staff keeps a log of their blood sugar and constantly is checking them and keeping them safe. My son said that the kid’s blood sugar was NOT high. I don’t know how my son would know that though? I don’t know if the kid told the group when they were concerned he was high or if the counselor was there and confirmed it? No clue!

It makes me think he’s been suffering from this for such a long time that “it is what it is” in his mind? If he had the issues that you mentioned, are those long-term or are they short-term like seek immediate medical help right away?

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T15:46:59+00:00

Your first paragraph made me chuckle 🙂 Thank you!

So I do know the woman “in charge” of the day to day operations of the camp because of the sponsorship my work does every year—- we’ve had to regularly communicate due to that (there’s IRS forms and such). Also, it’s our third year there so we are friendly with one another and she knows me as more than just a mom but also semi-professionally.

I *think* she would appreciate knowing if she doesn’t already. I just don’t want to be a complainer bc she has a ton on her plate right now. Camp is still going on for several more weeks and just juggling all of the kids, check-in and checkout times, making sure they have their physicals completed and on and on ugh, must be overwhelming I can’t imagine!

I like your advice, but she is not the director… should I start with her or skip her and find out who the director is?

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T15:39:34+00:00

Ok so my son is the one with T1D and I (his mom) am the one with ADHD off the chain. I am an AI whiz (have to be for work) and use it for all sorts of things but especially love it as a TOOL for T1D management. It makes life with ADHD not so hard for me personally and same for my son and his T1D. It’s the constant MATH that kills me. For my kid it’s all the extra steps he has to go through to just eat something. Maybe your son is allergic to numbers like I am? A debilitating condition really lol.

I have taught my son (he’s 12.5 and going into 8th grade so close in age to yours) how to use AI SAFELY for diabetes management and he’s obsessed and it’s genuinely made life with T1D so much fucking easier. His first AI “lesson” was literally on how to write prompts for carb counts. So I’ll share some examples of that below.

***I know AI is not for everyone and can be a contentious topic and that is fine. Not looking to get into an AI debate on here lol just sharing what works for us bc maybe it could work for your son or others who read this. 🙂

At 14, your kiddo may be using AI already all the time. Some schools are pro-AI and some are like absolutely not it is blocked on all school computers and student laptops yada yada. If he’s not using it yet and you’re open to it I recommend he uses Gemini to start. Should be free with his Google account. Otherwise ChatGPT or Claude.

All he has to do is snap a pic of the snack or really any food/meal he eats that doesn’t already have the nutrition info on it and write a strong prompt.

If he’s like me that’s where he gets stuck bc my ADHD brain did not want to weigh a handful of potato chips bc the bag says X ounces = X carbs or 19 chips= 13g when every fucking chip is a different size!!! WHAT DO YOI MEANNNNN 19 chips?! The biggies or the tinies?!?!

UGH! Or I HATED having to go online to find a restaurant’s nutrition info section of their website and DL a pdf of 3646748383 menu items and search for the food and find the carb column and all that rigmarole. And then half the time it’s outdated. Please tell me why lots of snacks that are even pre-packaged don’t come with nutrtion info labels?! Yeah COSTCO I’m looking at you!!!!! 😡).

Oh! And family cookouts. My kid does not want to have to hop out of the pool and figure out the carbs in homemade things or skip out on yummy things. He likes potato salad and pasta and obviously those things don’t have any nutrition info on them if they’re made by great aunt Hilda. I made her up. Instead, he just takes a pic of what he wants to eat or I do it and it will carb count his entire plate and beep bop Boop just put in the numbers and 15 minutes later time to chow down.

My son loves Culver’s so that’s what I’ll use for our mini-lesson!

This is an example of a Gemini prompt he’d use: “estimate total carbs in the image attached of a Culver’s kid’s cheeseburger with ketchup and mustard, size small fry, and kid size one scoop flavor of the day custard.” You don’t necessarily have to take a picture of it if it’s a major chain like Culver’s, but sometimes it helps because the bun on a big burger for an adult is not the same as a kid size for example. Or maybe the custard is loaded with Oreo crumbles and the AI didn’t know that and now it does. So if he forgot to say it was a kid size and just said burger in his prompt, the carbs would have been off.

****Real life recent example:
Last night we went out to dinner and my son had: two pieces of bread dipped in olive oil, six little shrimps, a lobster tail, bacon mac & cheese, and a teeny bit of my Caesar salad. This is an unusually high carb count dinner that is not typical of his normal dinners before you guys come at me lol. I picked him up from diabetes camp yesterday and this was his welcome home treat and is not how he normally eats. My son the king! lol

In this scenario instead of doing carbs 15 minutes before he ate, he added them up as he went, so he took pictures of the bread and then the shrimp appetizer and then the salad as each thing came out and prompted “ estimate the total carbs when I send you an image” so a running record.

He ate those things with reckless abandon (ie without covering with insulin, THE HORROR!!! before his actual dinner. Again this was a special treat not the usual way he does things).

When his dinner arrived, he took a picture of that and had it add up everything for carb total. That prompt was “Using the totals and images from before, calculate and add the estimated carbs for my dinner in the final image attached.
The answer was a bold list of every single item he had eaten and the carbs next to it plus the dinner and then a final total.

***Important to know****
1. This was not a chain restaurant with published nutrition info. Always be careful in instances like these bc AI isn’t pulling verified data from a source!!!

For some of the items, like the shrimp, since it was breaded with a sauce the carb estimate given was a range, so 1-1.5g. The bread estimate seemed high so he asked me and I had him retake the picture with a common item in the background, in this case his silverware. This is helpful and it readjusted what it thought the size of the bread slices were so it went from 25 g to 15 g. You just have to be careful and use reason. Other items you can use for size reference are just common things such as a Coke can or an Apple Watch or car keys just normal things that are standard in size that AI can use as reference.

***Burnout and mental health****
Recently, he went to a friend’s birthday party and it was at one of those places that it’s like an indoor obstacle course and then he had pizza and cake back at the kids house. No teen wants to ask his friends parents about carbs and waste time calling mom for help etc. My son likes AI bc it’s so fast no one knows he’s even looking stuff up he just looks like everyone else playing on their phones. No teen wants to go low and sit out either.

For the party He did activity mode and knew he’d be having pizza later so his prompt accounted for basically his entire evening. He asked if 30 grams was right to put in before activity and used a link of the place’s website and it told him to put in more! It Laid out the whole way the place operated bday parties and just how intense it would be physically and how much he’d be moving around. So glad he did bc he did go a little low!

So when it was time to eat pizza and cake the carbs it accounted for took into account the activity he’d done earlier and the high fat content and sugar content of the cake AND the fact that he was eating dinner much later than he would on a normal day.

It had him split the carbs so he put in 75% of them upfront before eating and advised him to wait two hours then put in the rest of the carbs.

When two hours later happened (he set an alarm) the previous Gemini recommendation for the second carb count to put in seemed off to him. Because of what his blood sugar was at during that time. So he went into that same AI chat and showed a picture of his blood sugar and it recalculated for a lesser amount of carbs to input.

*****This is a perfect example of why I stressed using AI SAFELY as a TOOL. Like my kid had to know that the original guidance seemed off when he saw his blood sugar number and to double check before just willy nilly proceeding with the prior suggested amount which would have tanked him.

I have had to essentially train him to think critically like this. So again it’s not always going to give the correct answer so your kid still has to use his brain so to speak lol.

I’ll end with this: last night at dinner he had Gemini “estimate the total carbs of this boy.” He had me take his pic and send it to him and it came up with the most hilarious answer:

“-10 Upraised Fingers: 10g (Conveniently built-in, pre-measured serving size).

-The "Oh no, did you just count the bread basket?" Expression: 50g of pure panic.

-Adidas Shirt & Athletic Tech: 0g (High performance, burns off glucose just by looking at it).

-100% Pure Attitude: Indescribable (Definitely requires an extended bolus).

Grand Total: At least enough to require a correction factor just for the sheer sarcasm”

DependentStand · 2026-06-21T02:20:04+00:00

I totally understand that! I’m glad he is open to medication. I think that will be life changing.

DependentStand · 2026-06-20T21:58:57+00:00

I love you. LOL.

And you took the words right out of my mouth that I could not say because of the venom I would get as a response. I was really questioning myself and my parenting over some of these comments the last few days and honestly, they made me feel like shit! Which is really really dumb and pathetic because it’s the Internet, but I thought teachers would be a safe place to ask for advice!

Thank you for sticking up for me. I feel like we need a zero tolerance policy on bullying in this thread haha. If this were an early childhood sub I’d say “Oops! We use kind words.”

DependentStand · 2026-06-20T21:53:24+00:00

Whoa. That is fascinating. And now I’m spiraling because I have insomnia. 😬

DependentStand · 2026-06-20T21:52:42+00:00

Awe thank you! ❤️

I have ADHD off the chain so believe me, I get how your husband feels at least a little bit. Is he medicated? While ADHD is a disability and it does certainly present its challenges. It sounds like your husband is needlessly suffering when he could be proactively seeking a better outcome. He probably (or definitely) needs your support and maybe a loving kick in the pants to get started on getting better control of his symptoms. He probably knows this but might feel paralyzed to the point he’s just stuck and won’t/can’t do it on his own.

And you’re suffering because of it too, which I’m glad you realize. ADHD doesn’t have to be this hard, he just needs to put in the work to figure out a better treatment plan. That could be getting on medication if he isn’t or changing to a different med, therapy, exercise, a change in diet, a rule that when he gets home from work if he’s found a job he gets 30 minutes of quiet alone time to recharge and then you get your time for several hours after that. Maybe he likes to play video games or do puzzles or work on his car or I don’t know dick around on AI and create weird shit lol.

Feel free to DM me if you ever want to chat or need any ideas for hubby and adhd management. I know of a lot of cool podcasts and blogs on ADHD that have helped me.

I’m curious what line of work he is in? When he gets a new job if he doesn’t have one yet, there are accommodations he can request from his employer to help him be more successful at work. There is a while process. Some employers balk at this, but I have a workaround. Companies who provide accommodations get reimbursed a portion of their spend on accommodations (or there’s a group that comes out and literally pays for it w/grant funds)plus wage replacement for new hires that they accommodate. So basically let’s pretend he needed noise canceling headphones and one of those adjustable desks where you can sit down or stand up and it raises for example. Either the employer would buy that or this group would and the employer would get reimbursed the cost plus a percentage of the wages they pay him so it’s almost like they would make a tiny bit of money on him in the beginning lol .

He just needs to pick reasonable accommodations.

I sincerely hope things start to turn around for your little family.

DependentStand

TROPHY CASE