Kids First, Diabetes Second: tips for parenting a child with type 1 diabetes Paperback – Illustrated, 31 July 2012

I'm sure the author meant well when she wrote this book, but frankly I wish she hadn't bothered to put pen to paper. My 15 month old son has just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. During this extremely scary time, I was looking for a little comfort and found none at all in this book despite its title. What I wanted to read was that Diabetes becomes an (albeit important) background to an otherwise normal life for my child and tips for achieving this. Frankly it just scared and depressed me. I realise that diabetes is a serious, complicated and all encompassing condition, but the author's overzealousness about it had me crying buckets with the prospect of what's in store for us. The reference to us all experiencing 15 seconds wondering whether our child is alive every morning is frankly irresponsible... I hadn't thought about that before but I will now!! Our nurse told me not to read any more so I chucked it in the bin. Its worth mentioning that its written by an American so there are lots of circumstances in the book which aren't relevant to British people, including lots of references to the American health system and the way blood samples are measured (which are different in the US) so I wouldn't recommend this to a British audience in any case. I will try to take this book with a pinch of salt and put it down to just one woman's approach. Two stars because it contains *some* useful information.