The purpose of this Bachelor’s thesis was to examine parents' experiences of their child falling ill with diabetes. The aim was to find out how the child’s or adolescent’s diabetes has affected the lives of their parents and how parents experienced the child's illness. The idea for this thesis came from a conversation with the tutor and from the interest for diabetes.

The theoretical basis of the thesis consisted of diabetes as a disease as well as insulin therapy, nutrition, physical activity, metabolic monitoring, skin and foot care, and finally guidance. In the research part it was reviewed how the parents felt about learning about the child’s diagnosis, the impact of diabetes on the parents’ lives, parents’ feelings after the diagnosis, as well as family life after the diagnosis.

With the questionnaire answers were sought from the parents to questions like how the child or adolescent's diabetes was discovered, how the parents experienced the change, whether the parents understood what it was all about and whether the diagnosis changed the family’s everyday life such as eating habits, errands, exercising and so on and if it did, how it was for the parents to get used to a change in their everyday life. Also, the goal was to find out what kind of emotions the diagnosis caused to the parents, and what was the parents’ first reaction when finding out that their child or adolescent had fallen ill with diabetes.

This thesis was made in cooperation with Tampere Diabetes Society ry. For the theoretical basis, information was searched from literature and also the Internet. The goal of this thesis was also to improve its author’s professional knowledge as a registered nurse.