How to Teach Children Healthy Eating Habits
Helping Children Develop a Lifelong Love for Healthy Food
Oct 6, 2009
Catch a person a fish......well, so goes the old saying. The same holds true for a child's eating habits. Lessons in healthy eating patterns can be a gift that continues to give for entire lives to come. Often, though, this task is easier uttered than accomplished. With childhood obesity at an all time high, it is high time we started teaching children to catch some fish! Her are some tips to help create a lifelong healthy eater.
Instill Confidence
Food consumption is and always has always been much more than just a means for body energy. Eating can be an important part of social rituals, a way to carry out traditions, or a gesture of gratitude. Children become aware of the importance of eating very early in life. They look to others to help decipher these rituals and understand them. Most children, more than anything else, just want to fit in. They want to participate in the social rituals that help to make up childhood. Birthday cake, pizza parties, fairs and carnivals, the Easter Bunny, Christmas cookies, Halloween candy.....and the list goes on. How can parents influence their children to be healthy when social rituals, commercials and society keep communicating that it is necessary to eat junk to fit in?
The answer is confidence. Children with confidence understand that being different is okay, maybe even cool. Confident children get the fact that eating a particular kind of candy bar or popping a specific kind of soda will not help them skateboard like super-skateboarder Johnny on television; that eating gluten free pizza at a pizza party will not make them an outcast unless they allow it to; that saying no to a cupcake or piece of cake will not take away from the birthday celebration. Providing a stable foundation of self confidence for a child is an important step in lifelong healthy eating.
Lead by Example
Parents find out quickly that children will eventually do as they do....not as they say. Therefore, it is crucial for parents to actually practice the diet being preached. Lecturing on the importance of eating vegetables while sitting over a plate of uneaten broccoli, can only be successful for so long. Children grasp reality at a much deeper level than just the spoken word. Mom and dad emphasize the lack of importance placed on vegetables by not enjoying or eating their own. Leading through example is also important at social functions and restaurants. What do mom and dad order and with what types of food do they fill their own plate? The spongy mind of a child is soaking it all up for future use, so parents should be vigilant.
Reasoning and Logic
How early is too early to start teaching our children about diet and health? The answer is that it is never too early. Teaching a child about health begins the day of birth when mom makes a choice regarding breastfeeding. Talking about food and the ways it enters and affects our bodies is paramount to a child's understanding of the world. Children should be encouraged to observe not only the way their food tastes, but also the way it makes them feel after they eat it. After eating a cupcake with frosting that tastes really great, a child may experience a burst of energy followed by an extreme feeling of lethargy or fatigue. Children should understand what we refer to as "a sugar high." One day in the future this could lead a little one to better understanding of food and superior choices.
Children begin making many of their own choices at surprisingly young ages these days. Sadly, the loving eyes of a parent will not always be present when the options are offered. The above offered tips will help provide children with decision making tools for the most beneficial choices, and parents an opportunity to breathe a little easier.
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