How about young children? Taking cod liver oil off the spoon chased with a swig of water is my favored method as demonstrated in the linked video. But what to do if a toddler spits it out? Not a whole lot except clean up the mess on the floor!
Once they spit it out after the first try, toddlers will typically refuse to open their mouths again for a second go. What is to be done at this point? Prying the mouth open and shoving a spoon or eyedropper in there is not a wise approach!
Stop the Gag Reflex Temporarily with Acupressure
If your child doesn’t like to take cod liver oil due to gagging, using a simple acupressure technique can stop the gag reflex for about 30 seconds. See the linked article for a description of how to use it with a video demonstration.
Skin Readily Absorbs Cod Liver Oil
If you’d like to bypass taking cod liver oil by mouth, the nutrients in cod liver oil are readily absorbed by the skin too.
In fact, until just a few decades ago, over the counter diaper rash creams used to contain cod liver oil!
Drug companies are increasingly taking advantage of the ability of skin to absorb chemicals of all kinds with the smokers patch being one of the most well known. There are now skin patches for birth control and even a patch for motion sickness when you take a cruise or fly in a plane.
Skin will not only readily absorb drugs but it also absorbs nutrients. When sunbathing with no sunscreen, the vitamin D forms in the tiny pools of oil on the skin to be easily and quickly absorbed. When you take epsom salt baths, the magnesium and sulfur are readily taken into the blood.
There is evidence that oil itself is also absorbed by the skin. Midwives frequently suggest rubbing castor oil on the belly of an overdue patient or using a castor oil pack in order to stimulate contractions.
Using this information to get cod liver oil into your child with no swallowing needed is just the ticket!
Where to Apply the Cod Liver Oil?
Since high vitamin cod liver oil can stain clothing and burn the eyes, it is important to put apply it to an area that is not easily accessed by little fingers and hands.
The best place for application then is your child’s bare bottom. Slathering a bit of cod liver oil on the bottom at diaper change time works really well.
You can slather the 1/4 -1/2 tsp daily dose on at one time if you like. There’s no need to put it on at every diaper change.
If your child is out of diapers already, you can slather the cod liver oil on the belly area instead and wrap some gauze around the torso to keep it from contacting clothing. This approach also works for older children with disabilities who may not be able to respond to the reasoning approach.
Don’t worry about a fishy smell either. Any odor is surprisingly gone within just a few minutes of application to the skin!
Which Cod Liver Oil Product to Use?
Should you apply the high vitamin cod liver oil with the synergistic butter oil too? That is a good idea as they work together to increase the potency and effectiveness of each other according to the research of Dr. Weston A. Price.
Please refer to my shopping guide for vetted brands of high vitamin cod liver oil and butter oil.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
No Laughing Matter: Wrinkles and Bone Health Linked
How to Get Your Child To Take Cod Liver Oil – The Healthy Home Economist http://t.co/izzbRXN
Here’s our two cents on getting kids to swallow the stuff:
Krista
How young should we start our daughter on fish oil? she is 9 months by calendar (6 months adjusted age–born prematurely). She is still on breast milk.
Hi Heather, do not give fish oil. Only cod liver oil and only the brands recommended by the Weston A. Price Foundation as some brands are very low quality.
The WAPF recommends starting babies on cod liver oil at 3 months of age. At 9 months, she definitely would benefit from a daily dose.
We use emulsified from Green Pastures with our 4 year old. Is that okay for the baby?
Just read & see that the Green Pastures we already have will be okay for the baby, too. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2010/05/should-babies-get-cod-liver-oil/
What a great idea!!
I have just ordered my CLO and Butter Oil from Green Pastrues, after reading about them here (thank you!)…
I am hoping that, since the dose size is small, I can reason with my Littles (6 and 3), but it’s nice to have a back-up option.
I’ll look forward tot heir skin-focused products!
They do sell flavored fermented cod liver oil… my toddler likes the orange… i prefer the cinnamon… either way, it helps to soften the blow.
SO I bet this would work for me as well!
I’ve been doing this with our 6yo son for a month and I have a couple of questions.
First of all, we use the liquid FCLO (he takes the butter oil on toast) and 1/2 tsp covers the whole front of his body! How can you get it just on the diaper area without it running everywhere? Would using the FCLO/BO combo be not as messy?
Second, it takes forever to soak in … we’ve been putting it on his chest/stomach after his shower and it takes an hour + to soak in so that it’s dry. Wouldn’t putting gauze over it just cause the oil to soak into the gauze instead of his skin?
Oh, and third, I’ve noticed that he’s got these little bumps (they look like small bites or hives after his shower – redder) on his chest. Has anyone doing this seen any skin irritation or reaction on their kids?
Thanks! I knew he’d never swallow it and thought applying it to his skin would be the perfect solution, but it’s pushing back bedtime (which is causing it’s own problems) and (possibly) causing some skin irritation. Ugh! Would switching to the blend possibly solve these issues?
Hi Amanda, try using much smaller amounts that will soak in more quickly and will just spread in the diaper area. You can just apply more frequently instead of just one application.
What about offering some raw honey as a reward after the FCLO? My kids don’t get many sweets, so the raw honey-straight off the spoon-is decadent. Keep persisting. You’re doing great trying so hard to give your son the best. Be patient. It will come in time.
Heh! That’s how I take mine, and I’m an adult. ;-3
What I can’t tolerate is the after-burps, so the honey solved that problem, too.
YEAH!!! I’ve been wracking my brain over this one. Thanks for such great info.
i always recommend getting the cod liver oil in at 6 months so children grow up with it “in the water” and it is part of their palate. giving fish eggs at this time as a first food also “seasons” them for strong fishy flavors. we did not do that, unfortunately, and came to FCLO later with our first. we started giving our kids FCLO when sylvia was 4 and henry was 1. we all take it together (parents lead by example) as a family in the morning after breakfast and use the oslo orange flavor. it is a wise tradition in our home like lighting candles for the sabbath or singing happy birthday. when i forget, my children remind me. 5mls for the kids and my husband, 10mls for me. we all chase it with cold raw milk (i don’t need a chaser and neither does my daughter – tough dames in this house!). my husbands says that if he has the right amount of milk with the oil he does not have a problem at all but if he doesn’t have enough he burps up oil for a while and that’s not so nice. i have spilled cod liver oil and it stinks up everything to the point of having to throw things out so i can’t imagine what it would be like applying it to the skin. i reckon we would all smell like fish which might be a bit much to tolerate after a while. making the FCLO (Family Cod Liver Oil is Fermented Cod Liver Oil) a morning (or before bedtime) family routine is a beautiful bond of love, health, wellness and tradition that i hope my children will continue with their families for generations to come. the FCLO will see to that!
This is great advice. We’re trying to start now (kids 6 and 3), and having a rough go of it…
Wish my mom had known about this. That nasty stuff repeats on you all day.
What about adding liquid FCLO to kids juice? I thought that I’d heard of that idea and planned to try it.
Similar to Emily Duff, we believe in leading by example and making it a ritual. We discuss with our children how most cultures don’t sweeten things as Americans do and that the strong flavors are common to many people (not that this explanation changes the flavor, but the education trains their thinking). My husband makes funny faces as he takes his syringe full (our 4 children are little), and we all laugh at daddy’s contorted face. Everyone else is so brave compared to daddy’s pretend coughing and sputtering. I give them a small chunk of butter oil wrapped in their favorite raw butter. Afterward everyone gets a small bit of raw honey on a separate spoon as a reward. Sometimes I run around the kitchen table dramatically trying to hurry with each child’s dosage of the FCLO because they are all waiting for their honey. Other times, I just have them line up at the counter. It’s just “what we do.” The cold milk chaser is also great for those who are really struggling with the taste. The strong flavor of FCLO also provides a great incentive to have everyone brush their teeth right away without fussing afterward to “get the taste out.”
This is so cute! I can just see this playing out. What a loving and creative parenting strategy 🙂
I take the cinnamon flavored myself.
My kids were a bit older (ages 4 through 10) when we started taking clo. I got them to take it by paying them each an extra dollar a week in allowance. I told them I’d rather pay them to take this as an illness prevention strategy than to pay some health care practitioner when they got sick. I also began by introducing it to them as “oil” at first, rather than disclosing its source. They never asked where it came from, and now that they do know, they don’t really care. When we switched to fermented clo, I began offering them a water “chaser” to drink afterward. Although they found the fermented harsher than the original, they still take it because they are unwilling to give up that dollar a week. It worked for me.
I’ll be 81 next month. Growing up in the 30’s we were given our teaspoon of CLO and offered the choice of a pink, yellow, white or green Lovell & Covell mint as a chaser. That only turned us off mints.
Eventually, probably via a women’s magazine or the Boston Globe Women’s pages, my mother decided to try the then-new capsules, following the (idiotic) suggestion to bury one in a cupcake.
When it was my turn I bit smack into the capsule and got an unexpected and unwelcome burst of CLO and promptly threw up all over the kitchen floor.
I like this comment. Humans need to listen to their instincts more.
My 91-year-old grandmother just told me about how her brother “little Albert” was supposed to take cod liver oil, that he had “osteocrondisplacia”… He hated it too.
There’s a reason you have to trick kids into taking cod liver oil: human bodies exist at 98.6 degrees (fahrenheit), whereas cod spend their lives in waters that are 32 degrees.
I think it’s much better to stick to beef liver or lamb liver or chicken livers (warm-weather animals). You get all the vitamins without the nastiness.
-James
Hi James Knochel,
Although beef, lamb, and even chicken are excellent sources of vitamin A, they lack adequate vitamin D. If one were to consume these foods a few times a week to replace cod liver oil, they would have to regularly consume foods rich in vitamin D as well, such as fish eggs and lard.
My girls are 4 and 6 so we just add the chocolate butter oil/FCLO to our smoothies: chocolate almond butter, frozen banana, coconut milk, a touch of honey and a splash of vanilla. We also talk about how good it is for our bodies! We didn’t know about using CLO when they were babies but the skin application approach sounds great.
Really, that works??
I have the peppermint FCLO, and it still have a strong enough taste – and feel, and aftertaste – that it’s hard to imagine it doing anything but ruining the smoothie…
Wow, didn’t know this was not option although I still wouldn’t do it, because I don’t like the smell and I think also too much of the liquid would be absorbed by the diaper/clothes.
What I do with my 2yo is I mix his cinammon CLO with two tablespoons of apple sauce. He doesn’t feel the difference. Try mixing it with your child’s favorite food! Mixing with juice didn’t work so weel for us, because it doesn’t dissolve in water.
Can’t get your kids to take cod liver oil? Check this out……. http://fb.me/PPhM5Gqb
This is GOOD to know. I have the cinnamon flavor and it gags me every time I take it. The kids won’t even come in the room when I’m taking it! LOL! But if I can get some plain and rub it on them, that may work.
Wow, you read my mind! I’ve been working on a post about how to take CLO and get kids to take it!
My youngest takes it in his homemade formula. My insanely picky eater actually likes it and asks for it! The kid won’t touch fruit or veggies, or most foods for that matter, but at least she takes fermented cod liver oil!