As parents, ensuring the health and well-being of your children is a top priority, and fostering a foundation of habits that lead to overall health includes teaching healthy eating, engaging in physical activities daily, and maintaining regular medical check-ups.
And sometimes, even more needs to be done, including mental health and physical therapy for kids that may require a bit extra care.
Keeping your child safe from threats that may be caused by health or outside issues like stranger danger inappropriate online content, and teaching them ways to mitigate stress can help them guard against the potential for disease, bullying, and other physical and mental health issues down the road.
By focusing on preventive measures for your child’s health, you are helping avoid unnecessary recuperative measures and building a foundation for long-term wellness for them to have a higher quality of life later on.
To help you learn how to teach your children to live a healthy life and nurture their well-being, we’ve compiled a list of suggestions to help you.
Healthy Eating Habits
Establishing healthy eating habits early on is a great way to build a foundation for physical well-being. Teaching proper nutrition that focuses on a balanced diet that includes plenty of fruits and veggies and avoiding unnecessary sugars and processed foods will be a strategy that lasts a lifetime.
The reason that establishing a foundation of healthy eating habits early on is so essential is that too often, quality food is sacrificed for convenience, making diets rich in salts, sugars, and fats too common, leading to an epidemic of obesity and other health issues.
Encourage fresh fruits such as berries, sliced apples, bananas, grapes, raisins, carrots, and celery as snack options instead of chips or other processed foods. Yogurt makes an excellent snack that you can combine with granola or fruit to make a protein-rich, nutrient-dense snack.
For meals, teach the importance of leafy greens and lean proteins like fish or chicken, beans, and tofu as alternatives to processed meats like hot dogs or chicken nuggets.
Play Everyday
Teaching a balanced lifestyle includes having your kids play outdoors every day. According to the CDC, kids should be engaged in outdoor play for at least 60 minutes daily, whether biking, running, sports or even going to a park and climbing around the jungle gym.
Another way to encourage a lifestyle of outdoor activities is to make it a regular activity as a family. Plan a family picnic at the park or hike around the local area. If those aren’t options, then take a 30-minute walk as a family around your neighborhood to get some sun and fresh air–it’s good for the body and mind.
Avoid Screens
Modern life is centered around screen time, whether cell phones, TVs, or tablets. Establish boundaries of how much screen time is allowed, and for specific parameters, consult with your pediatrician on the acceptable time your child should spend on screens.
Of course, sometimes using a screen is next to impossible to avoid, so teaching your child about acceptable use and limiting their exposure will help their cerebral development and make it easier to encourage a more active lifestyle.
Preventative Care
One of the pillars of wellness is routine check-ups to monitor overall health. This will provide a health baseline and early detection of potential health issues.
Include developmental assessments like hearing and eyesight and discuss developmental milestones you and your child should look forward to with your child’s pediatrician.
Post-Care
Sometimes, whether it’s developmental issues or coming from an accident, you’ll need to do some post-issue care, such as physical therapy.
For example, if your child falls and hurts their elbow, this can be a condition known as nursemaid’s elbow, which is a painful injury on the joints in the elbow. Often, it may take relocating the joint, and afterward, it may require therapy.
In that case, you’ll want to research options such as a local specialist to find someone to help your child regain the movement and strengthen the area to prevent future injuries.
When researching for specific therapy near you, you’ll want to look for a specialist in your area.
You can ask your pediatrician for references or do your own research online. In that case, you’ll want to include a local address in your search.
For example, if you lived in Pennsylvania, it would look like Pediatric Physical Therapy in Bensalem, PA. The results would then list pediatric therapy options for contacting you about your child’s needs and whether they accept new patients.
Pediatric therapy isn’t just for injuries; there are therapeutic methods for changes in the body as your child gets older or developmental issues that must be addressed to prevent or correct range of motion, muscular growth, or other needs.
Pediatric physical therapy is often easy to find, especially if you have a referral from your family’s general practitioner. But sometimes, it’s good to find other options that you can consult and see what they think may or may not be necessary.
Mental Health Awareness
One area that is often overlooked and underdiagnosed is mental health. But the issue is that if you’re mentally not healthy, your physical health often suffers as a result.
Teach your children that it’s ok to feel happy and sad and that sometimes sadness just doesn’t go away.
Normalizing emotional well-being and modeling ways to handle negative emotions and stress will help your child understand how to regulate themselves emotionally in the future.
Kids will model what they see more than what they’re told, so if you want to develop emotionally stable, regulated children, you need to exhibit those behaviors yourself.
Teaching your child the importance of healthy habits includes a multifaceted approach of teaching proper eating habits with daily exercise and routine check-ups for ultimate physical health.
