Tips for Giving Your Kids an Early Start to Healthy Life

Indian parents make their best efforts to provide their children with the best resources and opportunities needed to succeed in life. What gets overlooked often, is the development of healthy habits. With the changing family dynamics of Indian households, more children are now, more than ever developing unhealthy habits which continue to impact them throughout their lives. Now, it is not enough to find the best educational institution for the child’s development. Instead, parents need to take a proactive approach in collaboration with schools to help children get an early start to a healthy life.

Tips To Helping Kids Develop Healthy Habits

While schools are responsible for a child’s overall development and education, they do not have the sole responsibility of shaping their habits. In fact, parents are the primary teachers and role models from whom children learn everything and develop their habits- good or bad. As such, it is the parents’ responsibility to build a strong foundation which can help the children thrive as healthy individuals. Schools can help parents achieve this by implementing complementary practices and policies. Here are some tips.

• Healthy Eating Habits: The first step in building a healthy life is to develop healthy eating habits. With quick food delivery, busy work schedules, and easy availability of ready-to-eat and junk food options, it is easy for children to get exposed to the wrong kind of food, and even get addicted. Eating these foods regularly from a young age leads to childhood obesity, and puts the child at risk of developing unhealthy habits. Not only does this take a toll on their physical health, but also has adverse impact on their cognitive development, and deprives the body of healthy nutrients.
  
  Parents should strive to prevent this by not only building healthy diets for meals at home, but also creating healthy tiffins for the students. Schools can take proactive measures like only allowing healthy foods in tiffin. Moreover, schools which offer food should make sure the options are all well-balanced and healthy foods, prepared with utmost care to hygiene. Pizzas, burgers, fried food and other types of junk food should be prevented. Healthy alternatives which are also easy to eat such as poha, idli, sandwiches, and more should be preferred as these can be created in a lot of variety, and are quick for consuming.
• Minimize Screen Time: Today, more and more kids are getting exposed to and addicted to screens, which is causing a number of problems for them. From smart phone exposure to online classes, televisions, and more, the exposure to screens throughout the day is a lot for children. This also makes them home bodies, leading to poor physical development. Parents need to take proactive measures to motivate children to play outside and engage in physical activity regularly.
  
  This will often mean taking them to play and playing with them in order to engage them. Promoting skill development by enrolling them in activities like swimming, yoga, sports, cycling, and more can help them develop a healthy habit, as well as a hobby that they look forward to instead of spending time with a screen. Schools can at the same time work towards promoting sports and physical education among students. Provisions must be made for dedicated sports periods and activities like yoga, aerobics, running, and others can be a part of the curriculum.
• Practicing Proper Hygiene: Building a healthy life involves practicing proper hygiene habits. Teaching children at a young age sets them in the right direction and prevents them from easily developing illnesses. A school is a place where your child comes in contact with several other people including fellow students, teachers, etc. As such, a child who does not practice proper hygiene can easily get infected if their peer or someone who they come in contact with is sick.
  
  Parents need to help children develop proper hygiene practices such as brushing teeth after completing meals, washing hands thoroughly, covering their mouths when sneezing or coughing, bathing regularly and carrying a handkerchief or tissues at all times. Schools can help reinforce these practices, and additionally provide proper facilities like clean washrooms, sanitizers in class, and more. Cleanliness programs aimed at improving awareness can also be organized to help students. With these methods, they not only develop healthy habits for remaining clean, but also get the knowledge of staying safe in varied environments.
• Emotional Regulation: Apart from physical health, mental wellbeing is a big part of helping children lead a healthy life from an early age. Children face a lot of pressure from multiple sources. Pressure of studies, peer pressure, competition, and more can become overwhelming for the students, often leading them to experience stress, anxiety, as well as loss of confidence. To help children overcome these challenges, parents can take a lot of helpful measures. For instance, it is essential that parents steer away from putting unrealistic expectations on their children for academic success.
  
  Instead, encouraging their areas of interest can work wonders for increasing their self-esteem. Open communication is essential, which parents should strive to achieve. Creating a safe space where the children can open up about any issues that they are facing can help children share their feelings and work through complex issues more easily. In addition to these practices, parents can also help engage children in hobbies which can divert their minds easily, or even provide them with a constructive outlet to manage their feelings.

Conclusion

Building healthy habits early in life can help put your child on a path towards a healthy future. Through a well-rounded regimen that consciously focuses on these aspects and consistent efforts for encouraging a healthy lifestyle, children can be taught these very basic, yet very necessary skills quickly. With a healthy foundation, children grow up to be healthier and more responsible adults, with habits that reflect pleasantly in their personality. Moreover, a lot of these habits also make them much more mature, and interesting individuals, which bodes well for their future selves, even enabling them to stand out from others.