Sharing Healthy Living With Your Family
As parents, we play the biggest role in ensuring our children are happy and healthy. This responsibility can be daunting and challenging but remember, helping our children to develop healthy diet and lifestyle habits will stand to them for years to come. We don’t just want our children to be healthy we want them to grow in the healthy, happy adults too!
Here are my top tips on supporting healthy living for the whole family:
Eat together as a family as much as possible. Get the kids involved in planning the meals and cooking. They may be much enthusiastic about eating broccoli when they have helped to wash, chop and cook it! Family meals provide an opportunity to check in on the kids, ask them about their day, discuss any little worries and concerns they have. It’s a time for connection, without the distractions of phones and screens. This ritual of eating together helps children to foster a positive relationship with food. In a U.K. study, children whose families always ate meals together consumed 4.4 ounces (1.5 portions) more fruits and vegetables a day compared with children whose families never ate together.
Minimise the sweet treats but don’t forbid them. It’s important to allow our kids to enjoy all types of food. Allowing children to have the odd chocolate bar, hot chocolate or ice cream cone shouldn’t make us feel guilty but it shouldn’t become a regular occurrence either. There are lots of tasty alternative snacks to offer your child which are healthy, nutritious and filling.
Eat the Rainbow. Eating wide variety of different coloured fruit and vegetables can maximise your family’s intake of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. My kids love to check off our ‘Rainbow Chart’ every evening to see how many different colours they have eaten. Eating more wholefoods can also reduce sugar cravings.
Never say no to a picnic or smorgasbord. There is nothing young children enjoy more than to be allowed to pick and choose their food. It allows them to experience different flavours and textures, what they like and dislike. Why not try ‘Taco Tuesdays’ where all the food gets laid out on the table and the kids get to assemble their plate. Make sure you include things your kids wouldn’t normally eat and encourage them to try. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!
Swap screen time for outdoor play and family time. While technology is an integral part of life, too much screen time is damaging for our physical and mental health. Reducing screen time and establishing healthy screen habits can reduce your child’s risk of obesity later on in life. If we want our kids to stay off the screens we have to model that behaviour!
Exercise together. Exercise can help kids burn off energy and relieve stress and anxiety. It can control weight and build healthy bone mass and density. Make movement fun for the whole family by going on adventures in the park or forest, dancing around the living room to your favourite songs, going for a swim, playing tag or going for walks together.
Encourage sleep hygiene for the whole family. Kids who regularly get an adequate amount of sleep have improved attention, learning, memory, and overall mental and physical health. Keep a regular sleep routine, dim the lights an hour before bed, avoid using screens, spend quiet time together as a family and provide a space for sleep that is dark, quiet and cool. Your circadian rhythm helps you maintain a healthy sleep-wake schedule to function properly and it thrives on consistency.
Dawkins, R (2018) John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, “The Importance of Sleep for Kids”
