do you give your kids vitamins?

[Lorien]

Up to now, I've never given my kids (28 months and 6 months) vitamins/mineral supplements, my reasoning being that they should get all they need from a balanced diet. But I'm starting to think that I may be being a little hasty in ignoring supplements. This is particularly since going to see a nutritionist about dieting (for me, not the kids), and realizing how easy it is to get rundown in certain vitmans/minerals.
Anyhow do you give multivitamins or the like to your kids? What brand? Are there any drawbacks?

Thanks, Lorien

I give my daughter of 16 months abidec vitamins in her morning milk on the advice of the health visitor. She told me that as soon as they stop having formula milk and go onto cow's milk they should have vitamins until they are at least 2 years old. The abidec is a liquid and has vitamins A,B, C and D and can easily be put in food, milk etc and even tastes OK !! Ihaven't found any drawbacks and she's been taking them for about 3 months.

Lorien - I've never given my 2 year old DS any vitamins or supplements, like you say, he has a healthy diet and to be honest I've never given it any thought - I shall be interested in other people's comments.

Lorien, I've always given them to mine - on and off, when we remember - purely because they don't always get a balanced diet and it's one less thing to worry about! No drawbacks that I'm aware of and if you have a picky eater it doesn't matter so much if they won't eat eg fruit or veg.

Mine are older than yours though so I don't really know any good brands for you - for 3+, Tesco and Asda both have good multivits+iron. (Asda is a great source of vitamins etc altogether.)

Lorien, for a long time I was sceptical about vitamin supplements too, as we definitely offer ds a balanced diet. But whether he consumes one is another matter...he is nearly 4 and we give him a Boots Orange Multivitamin syrup daily. What finally triggered it for us was the change to nursery lunches. A big effort is made to provide the children with a balanced menu, I am sure, but I think his intake of lightly cooked veg and fresh fruit has plummetted, as this is his main meal for five days a week. Vitamin C is my principal worry.
It took us a while to find a supplement he'd take. I would far rather he had something organic from the health food shop but he could even detect Kindervital hidden in a banana smoothie

I am a big fan of vitamins - that way I can be much more relaxed about what ds does (or doesn't!) eat - and I think he eats reasonably well most days. I take vitamins too, and I have found that I tend to get less colds in the year than when I haven't taken them in the past so I'm hoping the same applies to ds.

My general attitude is that the vitamins won't do him any harm (any excess is just flushed away, well yes, I know that's not the case with all vitamins, but for the quantities we're talking here, it's as good as) but have the potential of helping a little on some days. Maybe they are a bit of a waste of money, but I'm happy to pay that for peace of mind.

DH is absolutely against vitamin supplements in principle. I tend to be, too. What is food for if it doesn't nourish us? DH won't let me cook anything that doesn't have lots of vegetable content. Even if we get take-away chips or pizza, we also steam a load of vegies to eat, too. Though I sometimes gave Floradix (iron supplment drink) to eldest child (when he didn't eat many high-iron foods). We have lead contamination in the house, and the risks from lead are much higher if a child is iron anemic. It was worth sacrificing principles for.

Not saying it's wrong to give supplements ... only I know many people who use them as a crutch and then get lax about what else is eaten. Not giving vits. means I try very hard to get 5 fruit+veg, whole-meal grains, low-sugar & additives, good quality food into my kids each day. I'm as concerned about forming their eating habits as getting vits+minerals into them. Who else put down diet as the main concern in that last Mumsnet survey, over terrorism, stranger-danger, etc.?...

I was told by my HV that when dd was 6 months that I should be giving her vitamin supplements (A, C & D I think) because my breast milk wasn't good enough! And that formula milk had more of these vitamins. I totally ignored her and my dd is a strapping 21lbs at 11 months.

I did give ds a short course of vitamins during the winter because he'd not put on weight and was eating very badly.

On principle though I think its best to get your needs naturally through food.

After 2 nasty colds in a month, I started to give dd (2.5yrs) Abidec with her breakfast last November. We've continued, on and off, during the winter months, when there are just so many coughs, colds and sniffles about.

She is very healthy and eats well (lots of fruit and veg) but is not great on meat sources of protein so the vitamins do give me peace of mind. Glad to report that since last Nov we haven't had any colds at all - don't know if that's due to abidec, good luck, diet, or a good immune system.

Gave vitamins on and off with all 4 children from toddler age. Decided it was a con really. Didn't like the connotation of taking 'medicine' every day. They are all fine. I totally object to the insinuation breast milk isn't good enough and needs to be supplemented with vitamins. Never gave vitamins to my babies who were all breastfed - the last one being exclusively fed until 6 months before starting solids.

ds2 (14 months) doesn't have any vitamins (bfed still- although does have cows milk as well).

ds1 is supplement city. BUT he has a VERY restrictive diet (he's autsitic) and is gluten free. At the moment he gets multi B, DMG (wierd thing bit like a b vit), gluten free floradix (for the iron- and it must work as his iron levels are normal and he hasn't eaten meat for 2 years - bfore floradix i gave him spatone- iron rich mineral water) and occasional zinc, oh and probiotics as well. Having said his diet is restrictive it's actually quite good - as being gluten free/MSG/aspartame/gelatine free he can't really eat any convenience food.

I have given my ds Floradix (the children's version) and Minadex every day since he was about 10 months if I remember rightly, but for minerals rather than vitamins. Mainly because he originally had a milk allergy and then never really got into drinking milk even after he got over the allergy, so I felt he needed a calcium supplement, and because he doesn't eat meat so I wanted to be sure he was getting enough iron.

The vitamins are an added bonus I suppose - I was a bit worried about the vitamin A level, as the combined dosage of the 2 supplements is close to the recommended daily limit, if you give the recommended dosage of 10ml a day of each, so I have kept it to 5ml a day of each.

NQWW- most vitamin A supplements come in the form of caretinoids (they usually say on the bottle). In this form you can't overdose on them- so don't worry too much about that. It's only if it's actual vitamin A that you need to be careful (say in fish liver oils).

Thanks Jimjams - I'll check that out.

Thanks jimjam, this is something I was concerned about as we have to give pastilles (for 3+) for our weedy 2 yr old (refuses medicines and detects things snuck into food/drink) who has a poor diet.

I have to say Jimjams, I find your posts always very informative, you are clearly good at research.