Better breakfasts boost brainpower

 

 

Few parents question that breakfast is beneficial, but getting kids to eat a decent amount before school can be tough.  If you have ever questioned how a healthy breakfast can boost school performance, read this article to find out how children who eat porridge for breakfast get better results.

Better Tuition has researched the best breakfast choices for your child, so here is our advice:

1.  Make sure you can offer a variety of healthy breakfasts (NEVER sugar-based – see our previous post on morning routines), so that your child can have a degree of choice.  If the mornings are too rushed for choosing, ask them to choose the night before.

2.  I’m all for multi-tasking and efficient time management, so if your child often runs out of time for breakfast, why not make it portable?  Wholegrain toast or oatcakes, nut butter (cashew, almond or peanut butter are all great) and a banana should keep them going and provide vital nutrients (but don’t let them take nut butter into school, in case other children are allergic – they should also wash their hands when they get there). 

3.  If your child is very resistant to eating in the mornings, make a fresh fruit smoothie.  Just pop some bananas, berries (frozen is fine), peaches, plums or any other soft fruit into the blender and whizz it up in seconds.  It’s not a completely adequate breakfast but it is very nourishing and will keep them hydrated.  Do add a handful of oats if you can get away with it.  You can buy smoothies ready made but freshly made retains more nutrients and is far cheaper.

4.  Make sure your child understands why it’s important to eat breakfast.  Even a very young child can understand that eating breakfast helps them to concentrate and learn in class and gives them energy to play with their friends.  Most children will make an effort to eat breakfast once they understand the benefits.

5.  If your child is a mini-eco warrior, show them www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.  Up to 1/3 of the food we buy is wasted with serious consequences for the environment.  It is thought that if all of us in the UK stopped wasting food that could have been eaten it would have the same environmental benefit as taking 1 in 4 cars off the road.  Help your child to see eating breakfast as recycling with benefits and they’ll cheerfully shovel porridge in no time!

6.  When all else fails, a star chart works wonders!  Give them a time limit of, say 15  minutes in which to eat all (or most of) their breakfast.  Offer an appropriate reward for a full school week of finished breakfasts, but don’t be tempted to undo all your good work by taking them to a fast food outlet for some deep fried cholesterol.  Home made pancakes with maple syrup as a weekend breakfast is a brilliant treat, but if time is an issue why not offer a non-food reward?

For further reading,  this government study looks at several studies across the world on the effect of breakfast and other nutritional factors on education performance. 

We are all so rushed in the morning that we don’t have time to focus on breakfast but any teacher will tell you the difference a healthy breakfast makes to learning capacity is vast, so please try it for a month and see how your child improves.

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