Everyone wants their child to perform well at school. How can you help your children reach their maximum potential? Research has identified four factors which influence a child’s learning at school and this is where you can make a real difference.

Eat Breakfast
Studies and research show students who eat breakfast are significantly:

• More attentive in the classroom
• Earned higher grades
• Have fewer behavioral and emotional problems.  

Breakfast doesn’t have to be a huge and complicated meal but it is probably the most important meal of your child’s day. Try and make eating breakfast a habit and soon even reluctant children will get the hang of it. Milk or a milkshake, fruit smoothies, fruit juices, fresh fruit, yoghurt, cereal (though watch that sugar content), wholemeal toast, rice or noodles, are some of the options for a healthy start to the day. If children complain about a lack of time, it takes merely a few minutes to eat a banana and drink some milk!

Healthy Snacking
For the same reasons as above, if you are giving your child a snack for recess make sure it’s a healthy one. Candy, chocolate and potato chips will give them a sudden increase in blood sugar, but are digested too quickly which will result in a short lived burst of energy. Soon they will be feeling hungry again making them irritable and leaving them unable to concentrate in lessons; just ask a teacher about that lesson before lunch! It makes good sense to give your child something nutritious which will sustain them until lunchtime. Healthy snack options that can help bridge the gap until lunchtime include:

• A piece of fruit
• Yoghurt or a milk drinks (watch for sugar content)
• Raisins or other dried fruit 
• Cereal bars (watch for sugar content) 
• food high in protein and fibre, for example fruit and cheese.

Drink More Water
Hanoi can be very humid during the warmer months, add to that the amount of physical exercise and sport our children do and they can very quickly become dehydrated. By the time a person feels thirsty they are ALREADY dehydrated.

This can lead to:

• Headaches
• Lethargy
• Inability to concentrate properly 
• Muscle cramps and weakness during exercise
• Constipation
• Long term challenges such as continence problems, kidney and urine infections, plus kidney stones. 

It is important, therefore, to make sure your child remembers to drink plenty of fluids. The standard recommendation for children is 1.5 to 2 litres daily, drunk at regular intervals throughout the day. Always check that your child has a water bottle with them and remind them to drink more if they are doing sports or if the weather is very hot (on average a child weighing 30kg loses half a litre of water when exercising). 

Teenagers are particularly prone to not drinking enough, they get busy and simply forget. Teenage boys over 14 should average 2.5 litres a day with more in hot weather. Teens who do a lot of sport, as well as increasing their water intake, may also benefit from drinking one of the many sports drinks available on the market, which replace both fluid and electrolytes. 

Get Enough Sleep
Making sure your child has enough sleep is also vitally important and research actually shows that teenagers do need more sleep than adults! Tired children are poor performers; they are less alert and less able to concentrate than their peers who are getting a good night’s sleep. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine in the USA recommends that:

• Preschoolers sleep 11-13 hours 
• Children in grade school sleep 10-11 hours 
• Teens sleep 9-10 hours a night. 
• High school children should not be working into the early hours of the morning and study needs to be balanced with leisure and downtime in order to reduce stress levels and provide enough relaxation to sleep.

Try to encourage teens to plan their weekly workload so that they don’t leave everything to the last minute and make sure they are not taking on too much as it’s impossible to do everything (keep an eye on all of those extracurriculars). For younger children, try to set a regular bedtime during the week and get into a routine of getting school work done before providing some relaxation time together, perhaps by reading a book in bed. 

Practice Positive Parenting

Many studies have shown that ‘positive parenting’ also plays a huge part in our children’s achievement levels. It is considered the most effective style of parenting where parents are shown to be warm, fair and in control. 

Remember that children cannot be good at everything, and so try to celebrate the things they do well and encourage them with the things they find difficult. Putting too much pressure on children to always perform well can have an adverse effect and they may become stressed and ‘burnt out’. 

Life is all about balance so make sure your child has the time to do the things they enjoy such as listening to music, playing sport, watching TV (yes we did say that!) and socialising with their friends. 

Just a few simple steps can make all the difference to your child’s achievement levels at school. Here’s to happy, healthy learners!