By: Paula Starnes

When my son was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I didn’t sleep for weeks. Every beep of a monitor, every minute his blood sugar was slightly off, every outing with friends felt like a risk I couldn’t control. The fear was constant because unlike the skinned knees and scraped elbows of childhood, this was something invisible, unpredictable and potentially deadly.

Like so many parents of children with T1D, I had to learn to balance vigilance with trust. I wanted to wrap him in bubble wrap and keep him close to where I could watch over him. But I also knew that my job wasn’t just to protect him. It was to prepare him.

Over time, I realized that helping my son live well with type 1 meant teaching him to build strong habits early. Checking his numbers regularly, under

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