How To Teach Your Child The Importance Of Health
How To Teach Your Child The Importance Of Health
One of the great things about kids is that they are blessedly unaware of many things adults spend their time worrying about.
But as a parent, you need to know the right time to start teaching kids the skills that will keep them healthy for life.
This can be everything from practical habits to larger issues around nutrition and fitness.
Every child is different and will learn these things at their own pace.
Hygiene
This is never high on most children’s priorities.
If the pandemic has taught us anything it’s the importance of hygiene when it comes to our bodies and environments.
Kids usually love to learn about washing their hands.
However, as they get older they need to know that this is about keeping them safe from germs and being healthy.
Health check-ups
Like adults, many children don’t like visiting the doctor or dentist.
Developing a good connection between health and visiting a health professional is important.
Try to get them to make a connection between visiting a doctor to feel better rather than somewhere they go when they are ill.
The same goes for dentists.
If you start taking them when they are a baby, you can make a game of it as they usually won’t need to have anything done so it can be a less stressful visit.
If in the future they need treatment for crowded teeth or another issue, they will feel more confident.
Physical Activity
Being active in everyday life, as well as more formal exercise is so important to our health.
As a society, we’re moving less than ever before and this is impacting children terribly.
Sedentary lifestyles lead to all types of health problems and children are becoming more sedentary due to spending a lot of time indoors or on screens.
Fostering a love of movement and exercise will be something that benefits your kids for the rest of their lives.
It improves health, confidence, and academic performance. If you have a sedentary lifestyle yourself, you need to start modeling good behaviors so that your kids think that this is the norm.
Nutrition
It can be difficult to talk to children about food as we’re often wrapped up in the food versus physical appearance mindset which has been the cultural norm for many years.
Instead of teaching your children solely about foods making you ‘fat’ or ‘thin,’ why not teach them about nutrition?
Also, explain to them how certain foods give us energy or make our bodies healthier so we can do the things we want to.
This might feel like an uphill struggle, as it’s sometimes difficult to teach something that you weren’t brought up with yourself.
Key Points
Teaching your child to look after themselves and their bodies can feel overwhelming, especially if they don’t want to listen.
But we must get this information to them at an early stage so that it becomes part of who they are and benefits them for the rest of their life.
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