Maggie Evans 
Every parent knows that their kids need a variety of vitamins and nutrients to grow up healthy and strong. But it can be a lot harder to know which vitamins and minerals your child needs, and even harder to know how to get those essential nutrients to your child.
While it's always best to make sure your child is eating a healthy and well-balanced diet, your child might make it more challenging from time to time. Multivitamins are one option to help make sure your child’s growing body always has what it needs, but how can you tell when your child needs them?
Children’s Nutrition Needs
Most children get the nutrients and vitamins they need from their diets. That’s especially true if you’re making sure your child eats a wide variety of foods that include whole grains and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Your child largely needs the same nutrients you do, though they probably need less of each nutrient since their bodies are smaller. Just like your child doesn’t need as many calories in a day, they don’t need as many vitamins as you do. However, since they are actively growing, it’s even more critical that your children get the vitamins and nutrients they need. Fortunately, adding a vitamin or supplement to your child’s diet is very unlikely to be harmful, even if they are getting all the nutrition they need from their diets. Plus, adding a supplement can help fill in dietary gaps and help keep your child on track.
Childhood Supplements
One of the most important and beneficial supplements you can give your child are children's multivitamins with iron. That’s because iron is critical to healthy development, and often one of the first things like can affect your child if there isn’t enough in their diet.
Multivitamins are also critical since they offer the most balanced selection of supplements and nutrients. There are many vitamins, like Calcium, that cannot be properly absorbed and used by the body unless it also has access to other vitamins at the same time.
Multivitamins help address that problem by providing those groups of vitamins altogether. So instead of just giving your child calcium, you're also providing other vitamins like vitamin D and Magnesium, that are critical for making sure their body can use the calcium. Multivitamins for children are also usually safer than individual vitamins and supplements designed for adults. That’s because children need smaller amounts of each vitamin, and sometimes need different proportions of each vitamin depending on their activity level, diet, and growth stage.
There are several other common supplements for children, and you might even have some supplements recommended by your doctor depending on your child’s lifestyle and health.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is another incredibly common supplement for children and adults. It’s common for children to have vitamin D deficiency, which your pediatrician can diagnose.
If you suspect that your child might have vitamin D deficiency, you should speak to your doctor about getting a diagnosis, and what dose is appropriate for your child’s age and weight.
Vitamin A
Vitamin A is another common vitamin that gets emphasized for children’s health. It's important for healthy skin and supports healthy growth and tissue repair, and is also important for your child's vision.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C is commonly used as an immune booster, but it's more important for helping your child’s muscles and skin grow strong and healthy.
