I didn’t think I’d be stressing about kid vitamins until last parent-teacher conference
Last month, I stood in the elementary school hallway after my 11-year-old Mia’s conference, clutching a crumpled fruit snack wrapper I’d fished out of my puffer pocket, and tried not to look guilty when her teacher said, “She’s great, super engaged… but she nods off in 2 o’clock math almost every day.” I immediately went through my mental checklist: Bedtime’s 9:30, right? Wait, no, I’d caught her reading Dog Man under the covers with a flashlight at 10:15 three times that month. But still, the first thing I thought after I got to the car was, do I need to give her vitamins?
I always thought vitamins were for toddlers who won’t eat anything but toast, or old people with bad knees. My kids are 8 and 11, right in that 7 to 14 year old stretch where they’re supposed to just… eat food and be fine. Except when I really think about it, what do they actually eat on a daily basis? My 8-year-old Javi goes through three-week stretches where he only eats beige: plain pasta, chicken nuggets, goldfish crackers, no veggies, no fruit, nothing that’s not off-white. If I try to put a pea anywhere near his plate, he pushes it away like I served him a bug. I used to fight it, now I just count it as a win that he’s eating anything at all. Mia’s gotten into this thing where she skips breakfast because she says she’s not hungry, and only eats half her lunch at school because she’s too busy passing notes with her friend. Last week I found a half-eaten sandwich moldy in the bottom of her backpack. That’s fun.
So I texted my group chat, the one with all the other moms with kids the same age, and asked what people do. Half said they swear by the gummy vitamins that taste like strawberry candy. The other half said they only do those whole-food organic ones that cost an arm and a leg. I remembered what happened the last time I bought gummy vitamins, when Mia was 7. I left the bottle on the counter while I took a work call, and she ate eight of them because they tasted like Skittles. I panicked, called the pediatrician’s after-hours line, the nurse talked me down, but I still had a minor panic attack at 9 pm that night looking up iron overdose symptoms. Never again, I thought. So gummies were out.
I went to the grocery store after that conference, and spent 20 minutes just standing in the vitamin aisle staring at the shelves, which is way more overwhelming than it should be. There’s vitamins for toddlers, vitamins for men over 50, vitamins for “active teen boys” with like 200% of your daily B12, packaged with pictures of footballs. Then there’s ones for teen girls that say “beauty & growth” and talk about clear skin and strong hair. I stared at that one for a full minute. My 11-year-old doesn’t need to be worrying about her hair and skin from a vitamin bottle, that’s messed up. Why can’t they just make one for kids that age that doesn’t have all the weird marketing?
Ended up grabbing a basic multivitamin with D and iron, no added sugar, old-school kind that’s not gummy, $12 a bottle at Target, and an extra separate D supplement because the pediatrician mentioned once that most kids these days don’t get enough sun, what with all the screen time. That checks out, my kids would rather sit inside playing Roblox than run around the backyard even on a 70 degree day. Mia had growing pains a couple months back, waking up crying that her shins hurt, and the doctor said that’s normal for a growth spurt (she grew two inches in six months, good god) but extra D wouldn’t hurt.
I’ve been doing this for a month now, right? I leave the bottle on the counter by the toaster, so I remember to hand one out before they run out the door for school. Some days I remember, some days I don’t. Last week I forgot entirely, was so busy wrapping Javi’s soccer snack that I didn’t even think about it until I was cleaning the kitchen that night. Turns out, the sleepiness in math? It was just the graphic novels. I started taking her phone out of her room before bed, and she’s not nodding off anymore. Oops. So that whole stress session was for nothing, kind of.
But I still keep the vitamins out. I was at a birthday party for Javi’s classmate last weekend, and all the moms were standing around by the punch bowl talking about supplements. One mom was saying she spends $40 a bottle on these vitamins made from freeze-dried spinach from a family farm in Oregon, and I just nodded and sipped my punch. I didn’t tell her my $12 Target bottle is fine for me, because what’s the point? We’re all just trying to cover the gaps, right? When your kid goes three days eating nothing but lemonade and birthday cake and goldfish, it’s nice to think there’s something small you can do to make up for it.
It’s not perfect. Javi thinks the vitamins taste like chalk, so I have to break his in half and hide it in a spoonful of peanut butter sometimes. Mia will remember to ask for hers on days she has soccer practice after school, but forgets on days she’s just going to art club. I still have that mom guilt sometimes, like am I doing enough? Should I be getting the fancy organic ones? Should I be pushing them to eat more veggies instead of relying on a pill? But then I remember what my pediatrician said: most of the time, if they’re eating anything approaching a varied diet, they’re fine. A basic vitamin is just an insurance policy, not a magic fix. It’s not going to make them get better grades or grow two more inches or stop being hungry an hour after dinner. It’s just one of those tiny, messy things you do when you’re a parent of kids this age, when you can’t see what they’re eating at school, when you can’t make them go outside if they don’t want to, when you’re just picking your battles every single day. Some weeks we go without entirely, and no one’s keeled over yet. I think that’s good enough for me.
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