What Every Parent Needs to Know

While foster and adopted children may appear healthy on the outside, they may very well be deficient in key nutrients that could impact future growth and brain development. These deficiencies develop because many vulnerable children do not receive proper nutrition in their early years. The most common culprits include:

Insufficient prenatal nutrition
Malnutrition in infancy
Post-adoption growth spurts

The growth spurts children commonly experience during the initial post-adoption period actually results in additional vulnerability to nutritional deficiencies. These periods of accelerated growth call heavily upon their bodies’ already meager nutritional reserves, resulting in anemia or other conditions.

Unfortunately, foster and adoptive parents can’t go back in time and nourish their children starting from the time they were conceived. But parents can provide optimal nutrition once their children are home to boost their children’s development and overall health.

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