Growing healthy habits in kids
Being a parent is tough. Being a parent in 2016 is really tough when you think about all the ways our kids are being marketed to in negative ways. Today’s continuous loop of advertising is telling them to be slim, wear certain clothes, and to eat all those sweet, fatty, packaged foods on store shelves.
With the additional barrage of messages about diets and supplements, and an increasing number of children finding themselves in virtual worlds instead of outside, it sometimes seems like everything is working against us as parents. But when statistics tell us that not even half of NSW children are eating the recommended daily amount of vegetables and only three quarters are getting enough fruit in their diets daily, it’s never been more important to push back.
So, how can we get our kids to make good healthy habits?
The most important thing to remember is to keep it simple and bring it back to basics. Nowadays, many children don’t know where their food comes from, or even why it is good for them. Take them into the backyard and fill up a pot with soil; plant some lettuce or herbs together and talk about how fruit and vegetables grow; plant a single sunflower in a pot and watch your child’seyes bulge as it grows taller and taller, eventually yielding sunflower seeds to munch on. Or, if you want to start right on your bench, pop some sprout seeds in a jar and grow some sprouts for salad sandwiches
Getting children outdoors and into the garden is more than a connection with their food, it is a positive lifestyle change that we can all make. Breathing deeply and engaging with the growing things all around us is a great way to practice mindfulness. When you get busy with dirt you are getting physical, along with spending quality time with your family. Research shows that children who are actively engaged in school garden programs are more likely to try new foods and learn how to cook, results that we could expect to translate to home gardens as well.
Once those herbs get big enough, encourage your little ones to help pick and prepare them. Give them some options on how you might use them and cook a meal together. At the end of the experience you will most likely have a mess to clean up, but the figurative icing on the cake will be sitting down to a healthy meal that everyone helped create, and that in itself is the kind of happy ending all parents can hope for!
Where to now? Here are some useful links to help get you started:
