It is imperative for people, young and old alike, to have adequate daily fluid intake for proper hydration. This is necessary for normal body functioning and immunity to diseases as discussed in item # 3 of Parenting Journey blog entitled ‘Top 6 Natural Immunity Builders for Kids’.

There are many healthy fluid sources available everywhere, but still you may find that people, especially school children, often do not reach the minimum requirement. Getting so busy and preoccupied with school work, socialization with peers and other extracurricular activities leave them oblivious of this health concern. Here is where parents come in.

Though the consequences of inadequate fluid intake may not be fatal in most circumstances, there are definite short term and long term negative impacts on our children’s health. Some known effects of inadequate hydration in children are frequent headache, constipation and impaired cognitive function. Vulnerability to common diseases like flu, cough and colds are very likely because of weakened immunity.

As promised in the above-mentioned blog, I will be sharing the results of an ‘experiment’ we did on finding ways to improve the daily water intake of our school kids. So much time and effort was spent on this endeavor but so many lessons were learned in the process and lots of gratification in the outcome.

Some Background

Let me begin by specifying the fluid sources of my school children. A glass or mug is at least 180 ml. Our school kids, ages 9 and 7 years old, drink 1 glass of milk in the morning and another one in the evening. Half a mug of lemongrass tea and one glass of water (together with their vitamin C supplement in tablet form) are taken in the morning. In school, 1 glass of choco milk is consumed for snacks but the half liter drinking water goes back home often barely touched. One glass of juice or iced tea and 1 cup of soup are the usual consumption at dinnertime. It looks like a lot but still inadequate because of low water intake while in school.

I feel so upset looking at their water bottles every afternoon when they get home for I know that the minimum daily fluid requirement was not met. Based on their weight they should consume about 1.6L of fluid per day. To know the fluid requirement of your child based on weight, here is the link for your reference.

With the objective of ensuring that our school kids are properly hydrated for better health and immunity, this journey began.

The experiment

I initiated making a water intake chart using post-its so it can be easily attached on our refrigerator door. It is a simple table where we could record the amount of water we drink, a sort of score sheet. Only the intake of pure water is ‘scored’ because that’s where the inadequacy was identified. Our son provided the pencil and was asked to make sure it is always available near the refrigerator (he tends to take it with him and usually gets misplaced). Everything else evolved beautifully from this beginning.


My husband asked my daughter to summarize the data every end of our ‘water week’, which falls on a Wednesday. She was taught the concept of averaging and how it is applied in real situations. She was advised to use long-hand in her computations…no calculator. My husband even made it more difficult for her by recording different fractions of glasses so she can practice mathematical operations with unlike fractions. My daughter survived the challenge and even volunteered to do the next score sheets.

At the end of our first week, we were surprised that even we adults did not meet the minimum daily requirement of 8 glasses. Our children’s quota is 6 glasses a day. The next week saw us falling short again of our target. It was even lower on the third week because everybody got busy that time. I knew it was not easy but I didn’t think it would be this challenging!

Because enough data were already available, my daughter was now asked to make a graph to plot the data for us to clearly see the trend. Very few directives were given to her and hurray her first graph was made! Here is the graph she made:

Looking at the trends, we decided that it’s time to make a change. A meeting was held after one dinner. The importance of water in humans was reiterated, the data were discussed and resolutions were made.

The first strategy was to give a reward (but not specified) for the person(s) who can reach the target. As it became a contest, our quite competitive daughter surely reached her target but didn’t quite care about the performance of the rest, not even to check on our faithfulness to record when we drink. Failure to record was a significant reason in some drops in the averages.

It was obvious that we had to modify the criteria for winning a reward to make sure that everyone would benefit. So I suggested putting emphasis on team effort and changing the reward system to enhance teamwork. That is, all four of us need to meet the target average for the week so that we’ll get rewarded as a team. The first reward is to watch ‘A Christmas Carol’ in the movie house. Because we seldom do this, everybody was thrilled with the thought.

Other resolutions made were as follows:
1) We started to modify our drinking habits. Fruit juice and iced tea were eliminated during meal time in favor of pure water. This is a triple benefit because we also reduced our sugar intake and lessen our expenses with this move.
2) Because we fail to record our consumption at times, we resolved that each one of us will remind one another about it.
3) The children gave their commitment to be conscious about water intake even while in school.

With all the above resolutions, the following week saw a significant rise but still the criterion for the reward to be granted was not met. When the showing date of the movie we want to watch drew closer, the pressure mounted. And just this Wednesday, on the seventh week after we began the experiment, we finally did it-- all points were above the horizontal lines representing the target!

So happily, we declared that on Saturday, all of us will be in the movie house to reap the reward for our success as a team in an endeavor that was started to make us healthier but ended up making us wiser and happier as well. CHEERS!

glass of water photo courtesy of stockvault.net

Having a sick child is one of the most unwelcomed occurrences in every parenting journey. The sound of your child’s coughing; complaints of body pain, chills, or high fever; and vomiting are all heartbreaking for parents. If only you can take all these on your child’s behalf…too bad you can’t, but you can do a lot to prevent him/her from becoming sickly. Though sickness in growing children is normal, its frequency and severity affect the overall wellbeing of your child. Yes, you can help him/her so that he/she seldom gets sick or can easily recover if ever he/she does.

The following are natural immunity builders that parents and would-be parents should know about. I strongly recommend that you consider these when deciding what’s best for your child. Nothing compares to the peace of mind in knowing that your child has all the necessary natural defenses to common diseases.

1. Normal Child Delivery. Your role in building you child’s immunity to sickness starts even before he/she is born because you will have to decide on how you will deliver your baby. Studies have shown how birthing options tremendously affect our child’s future health. When a child is born through the natural/vaginal delivery, he/she passes through the birth canal and thus gets in contact with microorganisms necessary to ‘prime’ his/her immune system. In contrast, a baby born via Cesarean operation bypasses this natural provision for the development of a strong immune system and thus, it is delayed. An article I read from the Lifestyle section of a newspaper talked about this in detail.

There are clinical conditions when a mother is left with no choice but to undergo Cesarean operation. But for those who can choose, complete and accurate information on advantages and disadvantages of each alternative should be made available before the mother decides. A well thought of decision on this matter should have taken the baby’s best interest as the number one consideration. And I did…four times.

2. Breastfeeding. To those who had or about to deliver their babies via Cesarean operation, don’t despair. There’s another effective and natural way of boosting your child’s immune system….nourish them with your breast milk. Actually, if you missed the chance to start developing your child’s immune system at birth, the more that you need to breastfeed your baby. Aside from nutritional superiority of breast milk, colostrum (produced during the first three days) is loaded with antibodies that help develop your child’s immune system and immediately fight off early ailments.

The advantages of breastfeeding are very well documented, but still a relatively lower proportion of mothers do so for a variety of reasons. The most common are dread of pain and high demand for mother’s time and attention. It is true that the first few feedings will bring unexplainable discomfort to a point of being painful especially when the baby is not properly latched on. This is another case of ‘sacrifice’ of the mother for her child. The loss of a mother’s freedom from discomfort/pain and the necessary deviation from her usual life focus and activities will never outweigh the benefits that a mother and her child can get from breastfeeding. After this period of adjustment, every feeding time will surely be a delightful bonding moment for you and your baby.

The first two weeks I breastfed my eldest child was so unforgettable. I cried every time she cries because I knew it would surely be another toe-twisting experience; and she fed every half an hour! To make matters worse, she had a tongue-tie that made latching difficult. But I endured, for I was confident even then that I was giving one of the best gifts a mother can give her child. I breastfed all my kids and I always grin from ear to ear when their pediatricians say, ‘Hey you guys, you only visit me for immunization shots…your babies don’t get sick, that’s good… I miss you though.’ It’s all worth it! And I am a proud breastfeeding advocate.

3. Adequate Fluid Intake. How much then is adequate for a child? Fluid requirement depends on your child’s age and weight. For some idea on how to determine your child’s daily fluid requirement, signs that a child needs more, and good fluid sources, you can access this factsheet. Proper hydration is necessary to maintain normal body functions and to eliminate toxins.

As for my school-age kids, we determined that they need to drink six glasses of water a day, on top of other fluid sources like milk and juice (note that we are using 150 ml glasses to make it easier for a child to finish a glass). Coffee is prohibited in the house (ooh I miss coffee), and soft drinks are only allowed on occasions. We are experimenting on a way for our kids (and us parents) to reach the above requirement. I’ll tell you about it in a separate blog.

Part of the fluid intake regimen I recently included is Lemon Grass Tea every morning. Lemon grass is a good immune system booster from what I read. When there is an impending throat infection in anyone of us, I just add ginger. Details on preparation and other benefits from this concoction will be posted soon.

4. Proper Diet and Vitamin Supplement. There’s no substitute for proper, balanced diet. Vitamin C and E and carotenoids are probably the best immune system boosters that can be found in our diet. Vitamin C increases infection-fighting white blood cells, vitamin E reinforce the production of B-cells, which are immune cells that produce antibodies that destroy bacteria, while carotenoids increase T-cells that can also fight cancer cells.

Though we provide daily vitamin C supplement for the children, the kind of food they take in is of utmost importance. You can never go wrong with fruits, vegetables, and grains. Consciously, veggie soup with squash and malunggay (Moringa oleifera) is included at least twice in our weekly menu (Malunggay soup used to be a daily entry when my baby was still fully breastfed). We have mixed vegetables or veggie salad paired with fish very often. Meat and poultry are served from time to time, also with vegetables. Mangoes, bananas and pineapples are regulars from the market, while calamansi, guava and papaya are harvested from our yard.

The kids are allowed to have candies and chocolates…hey they are kids!!! This is done in moderation and my school kids have been trained not to overeat. Even if a friend or relative gives them a whole bag, they will only try one piece or two for they know that too much of anything is bad. It is always their Mama who finishes the sweets in the house (good for me!). Now it is my toddler’s turn to get disciplined in this aspect (too bad for him).

Our second child is the most voracious veggie eater in the family and so he has the strongest immune system. He is the least likely to get sick, and if ever he catches one, he gets well fast with just an additional dose of vitamin C, more fluids, touch therapy and rest. He doesn’t need to take in antibiotics.

5. Restful Sleep. I cannot provide a concrete recommendation as to how much time a child should sleep. Even the experts don’t know for sure. To understand why, this page is worth reading. The emphasis should be that sleep be restful regardless of duration. Not having a full rest will make one feel fatigued and also weaken immunity, thus predisposes him/her to infection. Inadequate sleep is also linked to irritability, attention deficiency and obesity in kids.

The regular nightly routine for my three oldest kids is: after they freshen up, the school kids each get hold of a book while the toddler gets hold of his feeding bottle and then asks me to sing ‘Are You Sleeping Brother John?’ for nth times. My children love to read. My seven-year-old son is already reading illustrated classic novels (He wants to finish Robinson Crusoe over this weeklong semester break). By 9 pm, my kids are sound asleep. They wake up at 5 am if there is school and I would know if they had a restful night based on how quick they move to prepare their clothes and ready their own selves. They are cheerful and attentive even if it is still dark outside. The relaxing sleep time routine probably helps them plus the positive impact of ‘no TV on school days’ policy. On weekends, they get an additional hour of sleep.

Whenever stress is emergent, usually in very few occasions when there is much work in school or anxiety over a major performance, touch therapy before bedtime works wonders.

6. Get Them Dirty. Allowing children to play outside to touch the plants and even the soil, to run around and sweat will not only enrich their learning and childhood experience but also make them stronger physically and boost their immunity to many ailments. I have to warn to not overdo this, of course, and to take precautions regarding exposure to perils in the environment (e.g. deep waters, falling branches, wild animals). What we want is to let them enjoy and at the same time expose them to both good and bad microbes to develop the natural immunity they need as they grow. Overdoing this may make them sick.

Being overprotective to your children is also a health risk in itself. As a first time mom, an Aunt kept the whole house so clean and disinfected (she was studying Medical Technology back then) to prevent my cousin from getting sick. But what happened was the opposite. My cousin had frequent visits to the doctor due to various illnesses. Doctor’s advise? Get him dirty!


I hope you find what I shared above useful. I subscribe to Benjamin Franklin’s “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, so let us boost our children’s immune system and give them the best gift of health and wellness. It benefits us as well in terms of lower stress associated with taking care of a sick child and reduced medical bills.

photos courtesy of stockvault.net, except when labeled otherwise