Just how important water really is for your kids.

I'm working with an amazing woman, Irena Kirpichnikova, who has been assisting people with their children's learning difficulties for the last 20 years. I interviewed her here and discussed her work, but she also shared some of the stories of kids she has been able to help.

This story from Irena stood out for its relevance to proper hydration for kids.

"Jan Johnson brought her 9 year old son Simon to see me about his focusing inability. In the first 5 minutes of my chatting to Jan, Simon managed to take the teddy bear I had sitting in the corner, remove one of its eyes and put a hole in it and start taking out the stuffing. (I am sure a number of you parents can relate to this). That day I just asked a lot of questions about Simon, his lifestyle, his habits and his live. Simon couldn’t sit still for the life of him.

Simon didn’t like drinking water, or anything else for that matter. He was dehydrated! This is often very common with children with learning difficulties, for some reason their body messages about thirst just don’t work – and parents just can’t get them to drink anything! So we made drinking into a game for Simon and also I taught him a little about the brain and how it works and he related to the brain looking and feeling like the jelly he eats – which is mostly just made up of water… all squishy, and how if the brain is 90% water then you just have to give it fuel! Drink water so that it can work well and then life would be much easier for him… He also got to make his own icy poles with water and fruit – such as strawberries, banana and pineapple and was allowed to eat them all the time! Wow! He was also allowed to put stuff into his water like Mint, fruit, oranges chopped up and stuff like that… it became fun to drink water and see what he could do with it…

Within a few days Simon's brain was hydrated enough to activate the thirst message and he became really thirsty and just loved drinking water.. as a result he was able to sit still in class, focus and learn. Simon went through the Brain Activation Program to switch on his brain and bring him back up to speed.

Simon didn’t have a learning disability at all like he was treated for at school – he was just very very thirst – but his brain didn’t know it"

If you have any friends with Children with learning difficulties - and this includes Aspergers', Dyslexia, all the usual ones.. just tell them about this amazing woman! Her system works anywhere English is spoken and is an actual program delivered in your home. Send the link to this blog, or the address on the interview page.