squash vs water

[threesnocrowd]

My DS comes home from school dehydrated and poorly quite often. I send him with drinks but they won't let him drink them as I put squash in. He's only allowed the drink at lunchtime. He won't drink water when its all warm and frozen water doesn't defrost in time for break. I read on the nhs website that you shouldn't treat child dehydration with water but with squash or fruit juice. Does anyone else have any similar problems with their schools?

Can he not fill a bottle with water at school so avoiding the coldness issue?

We use a water bottle with a frozen plastic tube through the centre to keep it cold, but thankfully the school have installed a chilled water dispenser.
I can't think of the name of them, i'm sure someone will come along with better details.

Here you go, problem solved.

I've seen those bottles. Maybe worth a shot. Apparently the school water tastes like blood! He's very fussy I know but is getting sick so I need to come up with something.

does he HAVE to have a see through bottle?? even in his lunch box?
Will he drink weak apple squash, its all but impossible to tell from water in a faintly coloured but still clear bottle. So long as he doesn't shout about it.

How well does water chilled in fridge plus a few ice cubes stay cold?

The school water probably tastes like blood because of the iron in the pipes going into the water. It's not harmful but not pleasant. Though I'm wondering how your DS knows what blood tastes like - he's had a lot of nosebleeds?? If there's a choice between no water or water rather than juice/squash, etc it's best to have water. Unless your DS has mental health issues and might drink, eg a whole 2 litres of mineral water at one go, a water bottle with just water is medically fine for treating extreme thirst/dehydration. In fact it is best if the squash/juice is not too sweet as sugar molecules being filtered by the kidneys encourages even more peeing, and hence making a dehydrated child more dehydrated. If you are worried that he might faint from loss of salts and minerals from sweating a lot during playtime/sports, giving him a packed lunch or asking him to choose a school lunch with a bit of salt in it will solve that problem - eg ham, salted butter (which is normal butter), meat, (ie not salads or salt free meals) But not too much salt as that itself will also contribute to dehydration. There's usually salt in bread, and most hot lunches at school will have enough salt added to flavour the meal.

The reason why my class arent allowed squash in their bottles that get kept in the classroom is because when they leak or get spilt we get ants coming in, and sticky carpets.

Just get him one of those bottles with the ice core thing, or pop a few ice cubes in his drink in the morning. You can also get those reusable icecubes in various shapes or these from lakeland here

He is probably saying the water at school tastes like blood because someone else at school said it, although it may taste different to water at home.

Could freeze just a small proportion of the bottle overnight, top it up with water before leaving for school and the frozen bit would act as an ice cube and defrost, while having some water that didn't need to defrost to be drunk immediately.

Might be worth seeing if the PTA can be persuaded to get one of those plumbed in water filtery machines for the school as well - I know lots of places that have gone down that route because of the fact that school water can often taste like shite because of the geriatric plumbing. I ain't precious - I tend to just run the tap through till it's really cold and the taste goes away.

And I can totally understand the no squash thing - because once one starts - they ALL will, then you get the sticky spills, the squash bottle running and the "I'm thirsty... well there's water in the tap... I don't like water" etc etc etc.

Those ice core bottles do tend to leak like buggery from my experience with a Y5 class that all had them... although they WERE an "any excuse to get a paper towel cos then we can doodle masterpieces on it" brigade so feel free to be somewhat cynical on that front - think Tesco sell them as well.