Tag Archives: parenting

Going Healthy, Life, Parenting

Seven Tips for Raising Healthy Kids

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Every parent wants their kids to be happy and healthy. While they are small, it is easy to influence their diet and lifestyle choices, but as soon as they are in middle school and have their own peer group, your hands are somewhat tied. It is, therefore, important to educate your kids while you can about healthy lifestyle and identify some of the problems they are likely to face later in life.

1. Five a Day

If you would like your kids to like fruit and vegetables, you might want to get creative and introduce different colors and shapes, so the food is not only nutritious, but also interesting. You can create celery stick monsters and funky shaped tomatoes, encouraging your kids to eat more fruit and vegetables and get used to the flavor. Chances are that they will not like the taste of every fresh produce you give them, but they will pick some favorites that they will enjoy throughout their lives

2. Teach Them about Nutrition

While in many schools kids learn about nutrition and food, – as a parent – it is your responsibility to make sure that they are aware of the basic nutrients and their benefits. You can create a food map at home in the kitchen, or a chart with the most and less nutritious food. It is possible to get kids to realize that they can prevent some of the greatest health problems if they choose their diet carefully.

3. Get Them to Check Food Label

From an early age, you should work with your kids to help them understand what goes into the food. You might want to visit local farms to learn about how milk, yoghurt, cheese, meat, and vegetables are produced. However, it is even more important that you ask your kids to check the labeling on the food, especially sweets. Talk to them about GM produce and artificial coloring and flavoring that has no use for the body, and can increase the risk of health problems.

4. Create Your Family Vegetable Garden Together

Image via Elaine Casap

It is also a good idea – provided that you have the space – that you create a family vegetable garden, so your kids will know how food is produced, and have fun in the process. You can eat fresh and encourage them to eat fruit and vegetables. Picking the fruit from the tree or the strawberries is much more fun than reaching in the fridge. Your kids will notice that home grown food freshly picked tastes much better than that from the supermarket.  

5. Get Regular Checkups

You should be a role model when it comes to health and lifestyle, and you should take your kids with you to the doctor’s whenever you can. Apart from the times when they catch a cold, you should book a regular check up appointments, as well, so you can deal with problems arising as soon as possible. If you notice that your child has flat feet or a fallen arch while they are toddlers, you will have a better chance of correcting it. Likewise, if you notice that they might have a hearing problem, you can book an appointment with a hearing specialist to treat the issue before it causes your child long term problems.  

6. Oral and Personal Hygiene

As a role model, you should teach your kids how to brush their teeth from an early age, and encourage independence when it comes to washing, dressing, and even loading up the laundry basket. Your life as a parent will be much easier, and your child will develop a new level of confidence. Check on their routine, as when they turn into tweens and teens they tend neglect personal hygiene.

7. Let Their Immune System Develop

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While every parent wants to protect their kids from disease and infection, you should allow your child to develop immunity by not protecting them from the wind and rain. Let them play in the mud, don’t worry if they get dirty or fall off the bike. It is a natural learning curve, and it is best to let your child prepare for the greatest challenges in life.

As a parent, you are responsible for the health and well being of your kids. Start at an early age, and follow up their practices, leading by example. It is important that your kids take responsibility for their own decisions as soon as they are old enough, but they will need a lot of positive confirmation when they face peer pressure and junk food advertising later in life.

Going Healthy, Life, Parenting

Get Your Child Excited About Healthy Living

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healthy living, parenting, kids, healthy eating

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When we think about living a healthy lifestyle, we immediately sigh and feel defeated already about all the delicious and naughty things that we’ll no longer be able to eat – and that’s as an adult. It’s probably ten times worse being told that as a child. But as a parent, it’s your job to make it fun. You see, it doesn’t having to boring like you imagine it to be, but that’s all down to what you do and how creative you are. By no means do you have to try and make your child eat salad every day and do ten press-ups before they go to bed! – But if you’re struggling and aren’t sure what direction you need to go on – here are a couple of ideas.

Get them trying new flavors

One of the best things you can do for a child, is to encourage them to eat as many new things as possible so that they don’t turn into a picky adult that only eats chips and chicken nuggets. We all love snacks – they’re quick, accessible, and generally taste yummy, but rather than focusing on chocolate and sweets, try and implement healthy alternatives. Start with options you know they like, be it apples, or banana, or carrots, and then try and work on new things that they’ve never had before. This may be melon, or passion fruit, or avocado. Another trick to making this more exciting, is allowing them to help you prepare the food too. That way they feel involved and will be more inclined to try as they’ve been the ones peeling the skin or cutting them up. And of course, positive reinforcement always helps too.

Get them into sports

Sports are an excellent way to ensure that your child is getting active through exercise, without them knowing that that’s the intention. – Sports are fun, and for children they feel like a treat, a reward, being able to run around and let loose with their pals while enjoying a little bit of friendly competition. And all while they’re doing that, they’re getting their heart beating faster, and their blood pumping through their veins, and also burning off any excess calories they may be carrying around. Not only is it good for the physical side of health, but the mental side too. It relieves stress and releases endorphins in the brain that make you feel awesome. So take a look at some youth football uniforms and get your child decked out in the latest sports fashion to wow the team.

These are only a couple of basic ideas, but they are a great foot to start on in order to get you on the right track. The most important thing to remember is that it should be fun, and you should be bonding with your child while teaching them the importance of healthy living. Be open and honest and explain why water is so good for our bodies, and why broccoli has so many amazing benefits. – They’ll soon learn.

Parenting

Tips for Building Confidence in Your Kids

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Whether your kids turn out to be naturally shy or outgoing, you have a big role to play in developing their confidence and making them feel like they can take on the world. Of course, everyone’s approach to parenting varies, but there are a few universal tips which we are going to discuss in this article. Both your words and actions can end up making a big difference, so we are going to talk through a few different points in this blog post which should spark off some creativity in the parenting approaches that you choose to take.

Demonstrate Love to Your Child

The basis of confidence is often formed on love. If you can demonstrate to your child on a regular basis that you love them regardless of who they turn out to be, this can end up giving them a great boost of self-esteem and assurance. Your child needs to feel accepted by you, but you can also encourage siblings to show this same level of affection, as well as helping your kids to form close connections with friends. Though it may be difficult to show a focused level of affection to your kids for an extended period of time, you should try to listen to them as much as possible, encourage them in their pursuits, and show support of their ideas.

Give Praise When it is Due

Kids of all age crave the approval of their parents, but this is especially true in younger children. This doesn’t mean that you should simply offer them a pat on the back no matter what they have done, but if you offer praise appropriately, they should start to feel confident in their achievements. Of course, it is also important to instill the values of hard work and practice in improving their talents. After all, the world is not going to be as kind in offering praise no matter what they do.

Help Your Child Set Realistic Goals

One of the great pleasure in life for adults is achieving goals which they have set for themselves. You can give kids their first taste of this feeling by helping them to set and achieve some goals for themselves. Of course, you also need to make sure that they are realistic as this can easily get disheartening if not. With younger children, the goals should be short-term as they are less likely to have the patience and fortitude to achieve them. However, over time and with age, you can support them in achieving feats which are bigger and more complex.

Give Your Kids Independence

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One of the biggest steps in helping your kids to grow up into well-adjusted and confident adults is by giving them independence and gradually building this up over time. It may start out with giving them the opportunity to choose their own clothes from the likes of Nickis, but over time, you will want to allow them to go out on their own around the local neighborhood and beyond. Giving this independence is harder is the age of 24-hour news when you are brought so many negative news stories from around the world, but it is important that you allow your kids to take steps towards independence when the time is right.

Teach Resilience

As we mentioned earlier on, life is not always going to be plain sailing and there are bound to be setbacks and complications. It is how you respond to these that can end up making or breaking you. So, kids need to have these values of resilience instilled in them from a young age. You want to encourage them not to dwell on their failures and disappointments, but rather learn from them and come out the other side stronger. Try to help them with the steps of what they can do differently next time to improve their results and enjoy a more successful outcome to their problem.

Encourage Them in Their Pursuits and Hobbies

Another way that kids can gain confidence is through their outside pursuits and hobbies. First of all, you need to play a role in helping them to find their passions. Then, you need to encourage them to pursue these by enrolling them in classes, transporting them around and buying them the equipment that they need. It is a good idea for them to have both creative and fitness-based hobbies so that they learn to become well-rounded people who have a range of different interests. Even if their interests aren’t the same as yours, it is still important that you encourage them all the same.

Be Consistent in Your Parenting

A consistent and stable home life is one of the keys of encouraging your kids to be confident in the future. When your kids know the rules and boundaries, they know how they can and can’t acceptably behave. Essentially, you need to find a balance in giving them the freedom in their pursuits, while also reinforcing that there are certain consistent boundaries that they have to adhere to. As children get older, you may afford them the chance to have more input in their rules and restrictions, but you should still retain control in being their parent rather than trying to be their best friend.

Encourage Adventure and Discovery

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Even though rules are important, this doesn’t mean that you should rigidly control every part of your kids’ lives. You also need to allow them the freedom to develop a sense of adventure and joy in discovery. With younger kids, you may need to have a bigger role supervising from the sidelines. Day trips, vacations, the pursuit of hobbies, reading…these are all ways that kids can become more curious and adventurous.

Building confidence in your kids is something that you will keep doing for them throughout their childhood, and even into their adult lives. These are just a few of the best ways that you can achieve this.