Essential Parenting Skill: Ensuring Healthy Lifestyle for Kids

Parents should teach their children about healthy habits early in life so that it will serve as a pattern for them throughout their lifetime. Indeed, instilling a healthy lifestyle for kids can help them build a framework and shape them as they mature. These will help them instinctively opt for smart and healthy choices.

Instilling Good Eating Habits in Your Children

The eating habits established during early childhood will help create healthy eating patterns. Instill in your children’s mind the importance of healthy foods by being a good role model.

For instance, if your children see you eating the right food, then you are sending a message to them that healthy foods are important. Thus, eating with your children is a suitable moment to teach them.

Encouraging Physical Activities that Your Children Enjoy

Regular physical activity is vital for your children’s health. Allow your child to try different physical activities to find what they enjoy doing because they will stick with it longer if they like it. Regular physical activities help children develop muscle strength, keep bones strong, maintain a healthy weight, decrease body fat, and improve cardiovascular capacity

Helping Your Children Get a Good Sleep

Sleep is vital to your children’s health. It provides a powerful restoration process. It enables your children to function better mentally, physically, metabolically, and emotionally. Sleep enables the body to repair the tissues, restore the energy, synthesize proteins, release growth hormones, and maintain a strong immune system.

Here are some examples on how to establish good sleeping habits:

Ensure a Regular Time for Sleeping and Waking Up

Ensure that your children’s sleeping time and waking up time should be about the same every day. Regular sleeping and waking up time synchronizes the body’s biological clock and provides a healthy sleep rhythm.

A Light Dinner is Advisable

Avoid giving your children a heavy meal within two hours before bedtime, as this may interfere their sleep. However, make sure that your children do not go to bed hungry. Just provide a light snack such as cereals, crackers, or a glass of milk.

Give an Ideal Sleep Environment

Keep your children’s entire bedroom clean and quiet. Keep your children’s bedroom dim by using lamps to promote a sleep-inducing environment. Make sure that they are comfortable with the beds, pillows, dress, and room temperature.

Teaching Your Children the Importance of Cleanliness

Cleanliness is vital to avoid diseases. It is an essential factor in quality child care. Thus, it is important to teach hygienic habit in children. To make this habit remain forever, you must educate them during the early age of childhood.

Here are few examples of good hygiene habits that you should teach your children during the early stage:

Oral Hygiene

 Hygienic habit is important in your children’s everyday routine to avoid diseases and other problems. It should be a part of every child’s daily routine. Proper brushing, flossing and rinsing the mouth are skills that you should teach your children.

Nail Hygiene

Developing healthy nail-care habit is important because bacteria can easily transfer to your children’s mouth, eyes, and nose. Discourage the nail biting habit of your child because it might cause the transfer of harmful bacteria from the nail to mouth and digestive tract.

Hand Hygiene

One of the best ways to control infection is hand hygiene. Teach your children to wash their hands thoroughly before and after eating, after playing with pets, after touching dirty object, after using the comfort room, after sneezing or coughing, and after being in contact with a sick person.

Foot Hygiene

To avoid smelly feet and prevent the existence of ringworm, fungus and other infections, your children should practice proper foot hygiene. Teach them to keep their shoes clean and dry, to scrub their feet with soap including the sole of the feet, under toenails, and between toes.

Toilet Hygiene

Educate your children to wipe their anus thoroughly with toilet paper or baby wipes after using the comfort room. Instruct them to continue wiping with baby wipes or toilet paper until it comes out clean. Teach them also how to flush the toilet bowl.

Bathing Ritual

Bathing is the personal hygiene habit that you should inculcate in your children at an early age. The skin plays an important role in protecting the body from dirt, dust, and bacteria. You can keep the entire body clean through regular bathing. Teach them also to massage their scalp and wash their hair well.

Takeaway

Training the children is the parents’ noble responsibility. Parents must train their children while they are still young so that when they will grow old, they will not depart from it.  Certainly, that is the reason why we need to train our children at an early age.

Author Bio: 

Brittany Miller is working as a blogger for medical billing companies in Houston. She is a health enthusiast. She loves to write about family health and other relevant medical issues.