I Never Thought I’d Argue About Gummy Vitamins With a 12-Year-Old
Last Tuesday I fished a crumpled vitamin jar out from between my couch cushions, sticky with old granola bar residue and three gummies stuck to a half-completed 4th grade math worksheet. My 8-year-old fessed up to hiding it there 10 minutes after I bought it, so his 12-year-old sister wouldn’t eat the whole jar in one sitting. Can’t say I blame him – that’s exactly what she did the month before.
It all kicked off after fall parent-teacher conferences. My 12-year-old’s teacher pulled me aside and said she’s been falling asleep at her desk after lunch, can’t seem to focus during independent work. I nodded and smiled, but inside I was thinking, well yeah, she stays up till 10 scrolling TikTok and eats approximately three foods: chicken nuggets, dill pickles, and sourdough bread. That’s it. No veggies, no fruit except the occasional bite of my apple when I’m not looking. I started wondering if I was missing something, you know? That quiet mom panic that creeps in when someone else points out your kid’s weird habits.
So I dragged myself to the grocery store after school the next day, and stood in the vitamin aisle for like 20 minutes just staring. All the kids’ vitamins are either covered in dinosaurs for 5-year-olds or sparkly unicorns that say “for little girls!” Nothing for the 7 to 14 crowd, that weird in-between where they’re too cool for baby stuff but still won’t eat a vegetable if you pay them. My 12-year-old refuses to be caught dead with anything that has a cartoon on it, says it’s babyish. The 8-year-old will only eat things that taste like candy. I ended up grabbing a $12 bottle of basic multivitamin gummies, half because they didn’t have any cartoons on the front, half because I was tired of standing.
Three days later I found the whole top half of the bottle gone. My 12-year-old said they “tasted like strawberry candy so why not” and ate like 15 of them after school. I panicked, googled “too many multivitamins kid” and that just made it worse, then called the pediatrician’s after hours line. The nurse laughed, actually, and said as long as it wasn’t iron supplements she’d be fine, just probably have a stomach ache. Which she did – she camped out on the toilet for an hour watching TikTok, and complained about it for the rest of the night. I threw the bottle under the sink and figured that was that.
I texted my cousin who works as a pediatric nurse a week later, complaining about the whole thing. I asked her what I’m actually supposed to do, do kids this age even need vitamins? She said the same thing the pediatrician did, basically: if your kid eats a normal varied diet, they don’t need anything extra. But if your kid is like mine, where half the week their food group is “processed carbs and salt,” then a basic cheap multivitamin is fine, don’t fall for the $40 “focus blend” garbage with 10 different herbal extracts that no one actually needs. She said she sees parents all the time dropping a ton of money on that stuff because it says it’ll help with grades or focus, and it’s just marketing hooey.
I thought about when I was 13, that exact age. My mom made me take Flintstones vitamins every morning, and I hated them because they were babyish, so I’d spit them into my hand after she left the room and hide them under my mattress. Found a whole pile of them when my parents moved out of that house 10 years later. Now here I am, hiding vitamins from my own kid because she’ll eat the whole bottle. Full circle, I guess.
Now I’ve got this system that sort of works, I guess. I got a bottle of those tiny unflavored tablets, no cartoons, no candy flavor, just basic multivitamins. They’re small enough that both kids can swallow them with a sip of water, no fuss. I leave them on the kitchen counter next to the cereal box, right by the backpack hook by the door. I used to nag every single morning, “did you take your vitamin?” and that would turn into a fight that made us 5 minutes late for school, which is the worst way to start the day. Now I don’t nag. If they remember, great. If they don’t, whatever. It’s not the end of the world. Last week we went 10 days before I remembered we were out, and no one dropped dead. No one even got a cold.
The other day, the 8-year-old hid the new gummies I got for when he’s sick behind the couch, which is how I found that sticky jar earlier. I just threw the whole messy thing out, wiped my hand on my jeans, and didn’t even yell. I used to think I’d have this whole parenting routine down by now, you know? All the little health things sorted out, perfect supplements for perfectly growing kids. Turns out it’s just a bunch of hiding and compromising and finding sticky candy-vitamins in the couch cushions.
I don’t have it all figured out. Some weeks no one takes any vitamins at all. Some weeks my 12-year-old remembers and teases her brother for forgetting. The pediatrician said at their last checkup both are growing fine, their blood work is all normal. So I guess that’s good enough for me. I said I wasn’t going to fight about it anymore. Well, mostly. I did move the new bottle of gummies to the top shelf of the pantry this morning, out of my 12-year-old’s easy reach. Old habits, I guess.
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