4 Ways To Keep Your Kids Healthy

As we grow older, we learn how important it is to take care of ourselves. We learn all kinds of ways to do it including eating well, exercising regularly, and visiting a doctor when we are feeling unwell to ensure that there is nothing seriously wrong. As children, we haven’t yet learned those skills, and we don’t have the knowledge to keep ourselves in the best condition. This is why children need to rely on their parents and carers to do everything for them, and to keep them as healthy as possible. Here are some useful tips on how to keep your kids healthy as they go through life.

Enough Sleep

Something that can have a seriously detrimental effect on a child’s health is lack of sleep. It is more than just being able to concentrate at school and learn new things. Lack of sleep can mean that the metabolism is out of sync, and this leads to obesity because your body cannot regulate its own intake of food. Obesity is a dangerous condition at any stage of life, but for children, it can cause major social issues as well as health-related ones, and they can be bullied, for example.

It isn’t always easy to persuade children that bedtime is a good idea, which is why you should explain to them why sleep is so important. It is when the body has a chance to reset after the day that has just happened and, for children, it is when bones can grow. This can make them much more likely to want to go to bed.

Eating Well

A healthy, balanced diet is essential to keep children healthy. Parents should understand that they won’t always be around when their children eat, they aren’t at school at lunchtime, for example, and they can’t be at their child’s friend’s house when they are eating there. Knowing this is important because if you try to control every single aspect of feeding your child, you can have issues, and they just won’t want to listen to you.

Being flexible is the best thing you can do. Children need to eat healthily, and if you can work on what is known as the ’80-20 rule’, then you can help a lot. It means checking what they are eating 80 percent of the time and letting them have more freedom for 20 percent of the time. The last thing you want to do is make your child’s relationship with food a difficult or complicated one. Education is what will help with this and ensure that they are aware that some foods will make them healthy, and too much of others will make them unwell, or that some foods will make their hair shinier, or allow them to run faster. Information such as this backed up with real examples will make things much easier.

Keep The House Clean

Having a clean house is essential if you want to have a healthy child, and if you want to healthy yourself. This doesn’t mean that you have to have a deep clean every week, but a regular vacuuming and dusting regime, and ensuring that all sinks, bathtubs, showers, and toilets are cleaned regularly will stop germs from spreading. It can be tempting to leave the housework when you are busy during the day, or when you want to have some fun at weekends, but little and often will mean that you can keep on top of it, and your child won’t develop any allergies from the dust, for example.

Mold is something else to look out for, as this can cause lung complaints. Water damage can be one reason that mold appears, so if you do have this kind of damage, then employing a professional water restoration company to solve the problem will help when it comes to health issues associated with it. If the mold is a recurrent problem, then you will need to look further into why it is happening as it shouldn’t be left.

Exercise

Exercise is something that many children (although not all) love to do anyway. They enjoy playing sports and running around, and you can use this to your advantage when it comes to keeping them fit and healthy. Even children who don’t enjoy playing outside so much can have fun if you choose the right kind of exercising. The key is not to label it as exercise; social conditioning can mean that they don’t like the idea of exercise (perhaps they have heard an adult complaining about it so they think it is a bad thing), and don’t want to join in. Call it a game or a competition, and you will have more success. Make the exercise fun and try to do it as a family if you can, and you can all get fitter at the same time.