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The authors report their experience on evaluating metabolic control at home in 63 (36 female, 27 male) diabetic children and adolescents (age: 13.6 +/- 4.6 years; duration of disease: 2 months to 14.8 years). The diabetic children who regularly measured capillary blood glucose 2 or more times for day had a better metabolic control if compared with diabetics who measured glycemia less than 2 times for day and did not measure glycosuria (HbA1c: 8.5 +/- 1.9% vs 9.8 +/- 2.0; p less than 0.01). Our results confirm that home blood glucose monitoring is necessary to improve long-term metabolic control in diabetic children. In 28 of the diabetic who did not practice home diabetes monitoring, a significant improvement of metabolic control was observed after 12 months of home blood urine glucose monitoring (9.9 +/- 8.0 +/- 1.2; p less than 0.001). During pubertal development metabolic control is worse. In fifteen diabetic children followed longitudinally from prepubertal to pubertal period a significant increase of HbA1c values was observed (7.9 +/- 2.0% vs 9.0 +/- 1.8; p less than 0.01).