COULD YOUR CHILD BECOME A BUDDING EINSTEIN?

End of school year reports will soon be coming home screwed up at the bottom of rucksacks, or landing on the mat on the one day your child manages to get up before you and race to greet the postman.  Many parents will be visibly wincing when they again read the telling words "could do better" and left floundering as they try to fathom how they can assist this process.

Many young minds simply aren't hungry enough when it comes to learning and kids can display behavioural problems, lack of concentration and poor memory skills as a result.  Grades can slip and be highly disappointing for children, parents and teachers alike.

Getting top marks, or turning in a personal best when it comes to schoolwork is very important. Under achievement looks bad on a CV and in a competitive job market it is those with good grades that tend to do well. If a child cannot concentrate at school, will they be any better in the workplace?  It's highly debatable.

Brain food is a concept tossed around from time to time and it's a term that makes a lot of sense.  Our brains are composed of 60% fat and need foods called 'good fats' to work effectively.  Our body cannot produce these fats and needs to be given them through diet.

These 'good fats' can also be called' fatty acids' or Omega-3s.  Omega-3s are a family of polyunsaturated fatty acids that help support our nervous system and provide building blocks for the brain. They are essential elements of brain cell membranes, which are important for the transmission of brain signals.

Various studies have shown that Omega-3s can help young people focus and behave more acceptably in class.  Their mood has been shown to become more positive and their academic performance has increased; tangible signs of this being better reading skills and a higher spelling competency.  With improved concentration, they have been shown to study more effectively and retain more information.

But fish isn't the most attractive dish for children to tuck in to and, to get the required dosage of Omega-3s, your youngster would need to eat a hearty oily fish meal almost daily. To get around this problem, you can turn to Omega-3 supplements ­ but be warned, not all supplements are the same!

When it comes to Omega-3s, top marks undisputably go to Healthy & Essential's MorEPA-Mini range for children, this being a natural source of highly purified and concentrated Omega-3 fatty acid from pharmaceutical grade fish oil.  The easy-to-swallow tablets are guaranteed to be free of mercury and PCBs. and have a pleasant and natural strawberry flavour.

MorEPA-Mini contains ten times more pure EPA (one of the two most important fatty acids) than most other capsules.  The shocking levels of sweeteners and additives some leading market brands contain just do not feature and even the capsule is made of fish oil.  When it comes to MorEPA-Mini, we are talking top of the class with the capsules scoring highly amongst leading medical experts.

Nutrition is a vital component of educational performance and fizzy drinks, sweets and junk food are simply no help.  If the school report you read this summer isn't up to scratch, it could be time for you to fish out the finest fish oil supplementation on the market.

Once you have that strategy in place, you can perhaps instigate some other changes in your child's lifestyle. Physical exercise stimulates brain activity and helps the brain encode memory, whilst dark chocolate and cocoa have some credibility because they can increase blood flow to the brain.

Finally, download some classical music into your child's MP3 player or i-pod, as this is thought to relieve anxiety, assist concentration and reduce stress.  Can that be proven?  Perhaps not to any great extent, but it didn't seem to do Inspector Morse any harm!

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