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Proper Nutrition Can Make Your Child a Top Student
by Gobala Krishnan
It is important that your child gets his or her nutrition early on, preferably form Grade 1. This is the most important time for brain development, as they start to learn new things and create new ideas all the time. Brain development revolves around getting the right amount of:
1) Glucose - Simply put, it is the blood sugar level. Glucose provides energy, and is vital in determining attention span.
Lack of glucose can cause your child to feel sleepy in class. The most important meal is breakfast, and glucose should be a part of every child's breakfast, to ensure that the blood sugar level is maintained through out the day's activities. Kids who usually skip breakfast tend to have a shorter attention span and difficulty remembering their lessons.
2) Vitamin B - Vitamin B helps to release the energy in glucose.
Lack of Vitamin B can cause aggressiveness and depression. There are 12 types of essential Vitamin B, so it may be difficult to get all in a meal. Cereals are a good provider of Vitamin B.
3) Iron - Helps to transport oxygen in the blood system to each individual cell, including brain cells. Lack of iron results in anemia, which is common in children who don't get a balanced diet. Besides having less attention span, iron-anemic children are less motivated to participate in challenging tasks that stretch their imagination and ability. Having a good selection of red meat, tuna, chicken, or leafy vegetables like legumes and broccoli, can give your child all the iron he or she needs.
4) Folic Acid - Important in the formation of red and white blood cells. Lack of folic acid results in your child feeling tired, irritable and forgetful. Food sources like fresh vegetables and fruits are good sources of folic acid.
5) Zinc - Important to maintain communication between nerve cells and brain cells. Deficiencies in zinc can cause your child to have difficulty solving academic problems, something the medical world calls cognitive impairment. Zinc in its natural form can be found in cereals and peanuts.
6) Vitamin A - An important nutrient for the nervous system of a fetus. Vitamin A is most commonly found in beta carotene, from dark leafy vegetables and orange or yellow fruits.
How to Ensure Your Child Gets the Right Nutrition
A healthy, balanced diet, consisting of the right amount of cereals, meat, fish, vegetables, fiber-rich fruits, and lots of clean, unprocessed water will provide your child with the magic formula to succeed in school, both academically and in sports.
Does that mean that the parents of `A' students go out shopping each day, cook their own food, and sit down with their kids at the breakfast table to ensure that they eat what they're supposed to?
Not necessarily. Parents are discovering the importance of nutritional supplements to balance out their diet, as well as their children's diet. Nutritional supplements provide the answer to the close the gap created by a busy lifestyle and the need for better health. Adults can take multivitamins and mineral supplements out of their own determination for better health. Children, on the other hand, especially the younger ones, need to be educated, tricked or forced to take nutritional supplements. Any way you do it, it has to be done for the better future of your child.
Kids generally detest swallowing any sort of multivitamin pill, especially if it's very large or if it tastes bad.
Understandably for them, taste is more important than the benefit of the pill. Educating your child is important in the long run, but younger children need to be introduced to supplements in a more subtle way. One good way is by giving them chewable supplements, which disguise the fact that they are supplements by giving a good taste and flavor. Kids are generally more receptive to taking chewables than regular pills.
Another trend today is taking liquid nutritional supplements.
Liquid nutritional supplements go one step further than chewables by eliminating the need of pill forms. Liquid nutrition can be diluted and mixed into our drinks, cereals and whatever else you eat during the course of a day. Children today love taking liquid supplements that are mixed into their orange juice or other beverage. Even adults who hate taking pills are attracted to liquid multivitamin supplements. Liquid nutrition is also more readily and easily absorbed by the body.
Start Early to Determine Success
Mothers should take Vitamin B supplements during their pregnancy months to ensure complete fetal growth. Even though nutritional supplements are generally not recommended to kids below 2 years, ensure that from that age on your children are introduced to taking chewable or liquid nutritional supplements.
Grade A students and kids who excel in school generally don't have anything special that your kid does not already have. The only difference is that they have parents who emphasize the benefits of good nutrition. Now that you know their secret, start today by analyzing your child's eating habits and take action to change their life, and yours.
About the Author
Gobala Krishnan is a representative of Veriuni Nutritionals, a great solution for children and adults who don't like taking pills.
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 Recommended Reading: I Can Do That With My Kid!: Family Activities To Encourage Reading, Writing, Communication And Positive Self-Esteem In Children! by educator Rhonda Kehlbeck is a "parent friendly" book filled with family activities designed to help them build reading, writing, and communication skills in their children, as well as help their children gain and enhance their academic skill based self-esteem. From keeping a journal to brain games to mealtime fun, I Can Do That With My Kid! offers a wealth of practical, cost-effective activities to enliven one's time and help young people learn more about the world around them. Highly recommended for any parent seeking to augment or improve their child's learning skills, I Can Do That With My Kid! is particularly recommended to home-schooling parents, as well as foster parents and residential center based care givers.
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