How do I get my child to eat a healthy breakfast?
Wholegrains make a healthy breakfast.
Few would argue with the evidence that breakfast is the best way to start the day; it is clear that a nutritious meal will sustain them through the first part of the school day. For many parents and carers the question is: how do I get my son or daughter to eat a healthy breakfast?
Christine at Better Tuition has researched the best breakfast choices, 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 management of time, 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 smoothies retain 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 why they should.
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 advantage 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 stuff. 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. 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.
We are all so rushed in the morning that we don’t have time to focus on breakfast but any educator will tell you the difference a healthy breakfast makes to academic capacity is vast, so please try it for a month and see how your child improves.
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