How To Help Your Child Develop Healthy Habits

Healthy habits for regular exercise and a good diet start at home, and they should start at a young age.

The American Heart Association offers these suggestions to help your child stay healthy for life:

* Set a good example by living a healthy lifestyle yourself.
* Make exercise a family activity that involves everyone. Make family time for exercise every day, choosing sports and games that everyone enjoys.
* Set a limit on the amount of time your child spends watching TV, playing video games, or on the computer.
* Set goals for your child, such as a certain amount of daily physical activity or limits on the amount of unhealthy foods allowed.
* Encourage and reward good behavior, but never with food.
* Have a healthy dinner as a family every night.
* Teach your child to read food labels, and to recognize which foods are healthy and which aren't.

Health Tip: Help Your Child Develop Healthy Habits - Yahoo News

Comments

[DavidMG]

A new resource being use to improve kid"s nutritional status is a new book "The ABC"s of Fruits and Vegetables and Beyond." Used in quantity for class use. parents and teachers interested in getting kids to develop a friendly attitude towards fruits and vegetables should take a look at it.
It is designed for kids of all ages as it is two books in one " children first learn their alphabet through produce poems and then go on to hundreds of related activities.

[chickenpieeggs]

My kids love great educational music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo5cCmbnWTc

[cinemaven]

"set a good example"

Right there is where many parents fail. My two boys (one now a man) are adventurous eaters. They both love vegetables, they both will try any new food and both have wide ranging tastes. The reason is that my husband and I agreed when they were young that we would both eat our vegetables and try to be adventurous. The kids would come to the market with me and I'd let them choose new things to try each week. They were invested in the items and they'd always try them and usually enjoy them.

My kids are shocked when the family gets together at a buffet restaurant to see that their cousins "only eat brown food" ... my guys fill their plates with salad and their cousins come back with fries and chicken nuggets. My guys have the sushi, squid and oysters as their cousins squeal in horror. On both sides of our family, our brothers and sisters don't eat vegetables and neither do their kids.... it's not rocket science :)

Tonight, we're having spagetti squash (which I'd never tried until one of the kids chose it as their try-it item and now it's a family fave) tossed with pasta sauce & topped with clams. We'll finish with a salad.