Simple parenting hack to get babies to take Calpol goes viral

A mum’s clever hack to get poorly babies to take their medicine is taking the Internet by storm.

As any parent will appreciate when your baby is ill Calpol can be a lifeline in helping them to feel better.

If only you could get your little one to take it! Gah!

That’s probably why parents everywhere are loving Helena Lee’s simple trick to help babies swallow their liquid medicine and stop them spitting it back out.

When her eight-week-old son, Alfie was struggling to gulp down the infant paracetamol he needed to take to bring down his temperature, the mum came up with the genius idea of using the syringe to push the Calpol through his bottle teat.

The move was so successful the mum-of-two decided to share it with other parents.

Taking to Facebook she shared a picture collage of Alfie taking his medicine through his bottle teat alongside a short explanation.

“FOR ALL MUMMIES,” she wrote.

“So for the last 24 hours I’ve struggled to get Alfie to take Calpol, he has ended up covered in half of it where he spits it at me……

“Then i remembered seeing this trick.

“Not 1 bit got wasted and no tears. Please feel free to share with any baby mummies you know xxxxx (sic).”

Unsurprisingly parents can’t get enough of the simple hack and Helena’s post has quickly gone viral, with over 114,000 shares and 42,000 likes.

Many parents were quick to comment on the post thanking the mum for sharing her trick.

“Good tip to remember,” one mum wrote.

“That’s a great idea!!!!” added another.

“I wish I knew this years ago,” ­another parent commented.

Helena says she has been “completely overwhelmed” by the response she’s had to her parenting tip.

She told the Manchester Evening News that she’d given Alfie Calpol because he had a temperature after having his first lot of immunisations.

“I’d tried giving him little bits at a time, squirting it all in at once, tried in the middle of feeds, I even tried a spoon but he just gagged or spat it out at me – he then wasn’t getting all the dose so it wasn’t bringing his temperature down,” she said.

“It was then I remembered seeing this trick.”

Helena isn’t the only mum who has seen her parenting hack go viral. Earlier this year a mum divided the Internet with her DIY method of rocking her baby to sleep in his bouncing chair using a KitchenAid.

In a thread on Reddit called Parenting Hack KitchenAid bouncer w/ White Noise, the anonymous mum posted a clip of a sleeping baby in a bouncer, attached to a KitchenAid by a thick rubber band.

But people couldn’t decide if it was dangerous or genius.

A hack that seemed to fair better with parents was the simple trick to help children tie their shoelaces.

When five-year-old Colton Lillard’s mum Ashley posted a Facebook video of her son demoing an easy “new” way to tie shoes, the video garnered nearly seven million views and 155,000 shares in one week.

The power of the parenting hack, eh folks?

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