Your baby is a toddler now. Well done for growing a teeny human into a little person. You've got through the baby stage – yay. You've introduced a well-balanced eating habits and well-balanced meals – slap on the back.
These days, they're happily sitting in highchairs, feeding themselves, babbling and chatting while they drop food all over themselves. And the the floor. Oh, no. And then there's the pickiness. Suddenly it's not so easy to know what nutrients they're getting every day.
Here are a few facts you might need in your arsenal so you can get all the necessary nutrients into their growing little bodies:
- In their first three years, toddlers grow and develop faster than any other stage in their lives. Hard to believe.
- By the time a toddler reaches three years of age, their brain has grown to around 80% of their adult size. Seriously!
- Vitamin D is essential for a toddler's growth and development: The sunshine vitamin is important for normal bone development. Toddlers need five times more Vitamin D per kilogram of body weight than adults, and over 90% of 1-3 year olds get less than the recommended amount of Vitamin D. Yes, really!
- Nearly one in four toddlers aged 1 year in Ireland are not getting t he right amount of Iron. They need the same amount of Iron as a 30-year-old man. We kid you not.
- 70% of Irish parents are concerned about their toddler's nutrition. That's pretty big!
- 67% of parents have experienced fussy eating with their toddler.
- A toddler has learned 900 words by the time they are there years old.
Brought to you by Ireland's only feeding and nutrition website, just for toddlers, toddlebox.ie.
