Until recently, it was thought that Type 2 diabetes was a
disease of adults. During the 1990’s, however, pediatric
endocrinologists began to recognize and diagnose it in children.
There has been an increasing number of children diagnosed with
Type 2 diabetes ever since that time, forcing more and more
parents to learn about this disease and its treatments. While
many parents may find the thought of a pill a lot easier to
swallow than the thought of insulin injections, treatment for
Type 2 diabetes varies from child to child. Your child’s health-
care team may recommend treatments ranging from a change in diet
and more exercise to insulin injections to an oral medicine to a
combination of insulin and an oral medicine. To understand why
your child is being treated the way he is and why his treatment
may change over time, it is important to understand Type 2
diabetes. What is Type 2? People with diabetes have difficulty
regulating the level of glucose in their blood. The two major
forms of diabetes are Type 1 and