Healthy Lifestyle For Children: Create it, Live it, and Enjoy it!
The goal of any parent is to ultimately create a healthy lifestyle for children. Creating it, living it and enjoying it however, require some strategies for achievement.
The healthy lifestyle that you create for your children now will determine, mainly, their lifestyle as an adult. Creating ahealthy lifestyle for children includes how they eat, behave, and most of all their daily life habits –responsibility, respect and appreciation for their body, mind and spirit.
So what is a healthy lifestyle for children? It’s a choice. That choice starts with parents who consciously choose to live and lead a healthy lifestyle. Kids follow the choices their parents make, and kids will justify their behaviors, thoughts and actions by saying, “my parents do it,” so therefore it’s okay. In other words, YOU become your child’s reasons for challenges, failures and misbehaviors.
Imagine for a moment, all the things you have learned in your life as an adult. Wouldn’t your life be different if you knew then what you know now? I cannot tell you how many parents have shared with me, “if my parents had taught me how to create and live a healthy lifestyle as a child, my life would have been far better off than it is now. I had to learn the hard way.”
And they’re right. Not only would their lives have been different, they would have become more powerful and joyful at an early age.
A healthy lifestyle for children does not have to be difficult, but it can become difficult later on when your children become adults, if they don’t begin learning now. There are simple things you can do right now that children and teens love. Let’s take a look at them.
Here are some tips for creating, living and enjoying a healthy lifestyle for children:
Parents MUST take care of themselves FIRST: Sounds difficult doesn’t it? When will you have the time to take care of you first? A healthy lifestyle for children starts with VALUES. When you have a child, sometimes your core values can change, mainly temporarily. For the most part, parents often sacrifice their core values for their child. Although that is noble and often required, parents must return to their core values so their child can develop their own.
If parents don’t take care of themselves, who will? Who will teach your children core values? We all do what we think is most important to us in any given moment. Parent must continue to live their values regardless of their circumstances. Don’t sell out on yourself just because you have children. They are NOT to blame. In fact, children are inspired more by parents who “live a healthy lifestyle” and live from their values.
Creating a healthy lifestyle for children starts with parents living their own healthy lifestyle.
Here are 12 more actionable tips:
#1 Role modeling: I bet you’ve heard this one before, right? You don’t have to try to be a good role model if you’re living a healthy lifestyle. It’s a matter of choosing to live in the most productive, effective and conscious way. It’s a choice. Making the choice is simple, getting to the choice is where many people find themselves stuck.
Many younger parents focus on creating a healthy lifestyle for children, and that is important. But if you don t know how, then re-read the paragraph above; you’re not connected to your values if you think you don’t know how to create a healthy lifestyle. Creating a healthy lifestyle for children is about the way you show up, the emotions that dominate your life as much as what you’re doing. Keep that in mind. It’s not just about what you’re doing, but feelings you infuse into what you’re doing. That is how your children will experientially learn how to develop a healthy lifestyle, or not.
#2 Consultative Parenting: We’re 11 years into the 21st Century, the old school parenting model of yelling, telling, and lecturing and, my most despised strategy, spanking is OUT. In fact it does not work and never has. But many parents did not know a better way; they simply did what their parents did.
A main part of creating a healthy lifestyle for children is to understand the world they live in. Kids today are electronic babies. They want collaboration, not dictatorship. They want to be a part of team, not be ruled. They want to feel important, to feel like they are contributing, and ultimately they want to know they are loved — not spoiled love, but loved for who they are not by what they do.
A consultative parent creates a healthy lifestyle for children by asking questions. Great consultants ask great questions and let their clients figure things out. Your role as a parent is toREMOVE the stress from your life by keeping your children’s problems their problems. Consult with your kids about their problems so they can solve them on their own.
Consultants, like parents who are committed to creating a healthy lifestyle for children, offersolutions and choices when their clients/kids cannot figure out what to do. How can you create a healthy lifestyle for your children if you solve, rescue and fix their lives for them? Having faith in your child and supporting them in figuring things out on their own builds character, courage and responsibility for life.
Creating a healthy lifestyle for children means consulting with them so they can take responsibility for their own problems and life. It’s better they learn this at home, from their parents, than have the world teach them the hard way. Naturally, they will not figure out everything — that is why offering solutions and choices is vital.
#3 Love Me Enough to Set Healthy Boundaries: A key to creating a healthy lifestyle for children is to create boundaries so your child knows how to show up, to live and enjoy life, but also so they know what is going to happen if things are not working. You cannot realistically expect your child to magically create a healthy lifestyle if they don’t know the boundaries of the game beforehand, can you?
I attended a Love and Logic parent teach training program a while back. It’s a great course that I recommend. I bought a poster from the course and hung it on my daughter’s door.
So, here is what the poster says:
“I will respect you at all times so you know how to treat me.”
“Feel free to do anything as long as it’s healthy and does not cause a problem for you or anyone else.”
“If you cause a problem I will ask you to solve it.”
“If you cannot solve it or you’re unwilling to solve it, then I will solve it for you.”
“I choose to solve it based upon the special person and circumstance.”
“If at any time you feel something is unfair just whisper in my ear, “That’s not fair,” and we can talk about it.
My daughter is too young to read yet, but each time she sees the poster, she asks me to read it. She loves it. The very first day I hung the poster up, she asked me to read it to her 4 times. Then she said, “So when are you going to start doing this to me.” I said, “You rarely create problems.”
So now anytime she is upset or wants something, she whispers. Never does she yell, scream or throw tantrums, and I have never experienced her doing it. Why? Because she knows the healthy boundaries now, she knows how to show up, handle her emotions (at age 4) and she whisper to me. If she does yell or get upset, then I know something serious is happening. It works. It’s easier and more fun parenting as a consultant who is committed to creating a healthy lifestyle for children.
Children are brilliant aren’t they? So brilliant that most of them are starving for a healthy lifestyle. The next day after we discussed the poster, my daughter was painting and I said to her that I am going downstairs to type a quick email. By the time I got downstairs I could hear her feet run into the kitchen to grab some chocolate, which I had already told her she could have after dinner.
I knew she was creating a healthy lifestyle situation; she wanted me to hold her to the boundaries so she created a problem (children are starving for healthy boundaries). I stuck my head out the office door and said, “If you are choosing to create a problem, I am happy to solve it for you — unless you want to solve it for yourself?”
Instantly, she slammed the cupboard door and ran back into her room laughing, she said, “I will wait until after dinner.”
I said, “Great choice.”
Creating a healthy lifestyle for children is not complicated and children are starving for it. They need to know how to live, know their boundaries, and know how to create a healthy lifestyle. Every year, kids will start to outgrow their boundaries and push the limits. That is what kids do in order to grow. When that happens, just update the boundaries based upon their ability, age, behaviors and such.
Creating a healthy lifestyle for children includes loving them enough to set healthy boundaries.
#4 Environment: Recently I became a CASA, shot for Court Appointment Special Advocate. I am a volunteer for family court judges who have cases where parents are getting a divorce and there are children involved who may be in some kind of danger, or the parents have been in trouble with the law and the judge wants to ensure the child is safe.
I have no decision-making power. I simply protect the child so he or she feels safe and inform the judge of how the child is doing so the judge knows how to keep the family together, basically helping the family create a healthy lifestyle for children and themselves.
I cannot tell you many cases I’ve seen and read about in which the environment some children are in causes them to misbehave, to experience fear, rejection, pain and criticism. Some of these kids don’t feel safe at home or school. Their environment is set up for them NOT to experience their greatness, love or personal development mainly because the parents are NOT living their core values and creating a healthy lifestyle for their children, how could they? And they are not living a healthy lifestyle for themselves.
What is the environment that you can create to support a healthy lifestyle for children?
What feelings do you want to permeate your environment in order to create a healthy lifestyle for children?
What atmosphere do you want to create in order for your kids to experience a healthy lifestyle?
#5 Quality foods: Creating a healthy lifestyle for children also means quality food choices. My daughter does not expect to eat tons of sugar or carbohydrates in my house because I don’t keep them in the house. I’ve removed toxic food from her life; our living environment does not contain garbage so she does not ask for it nor crave it.
Creating and living a healthy lifestyle for children in regards to food is simpler than you might think. PALEO food is the best, it keeps kids well balanced, healthy, and full of nutrition — and most of allyou don’t have to count calories, manage food portions, or cook for long hours.
Paleo food consists of organic meat, chicken and fish, vegetables galore, small amount of fruit, and all sorts of nuts and seeds. The closer you eat to what has roots, and is fed by roots and grass, the better off you are.
How long does it take to BBQ fish or chicken and steam veggies? Hmmm, maybe 15 minutes. Even better, you can BBQ every Sunday and have meals for the rest of the week. This is not hard; it’s easy and can be done by anyone.
Living the healthy lifestyle for children in regards to food is simple; if healthy food is available they will eat it, and tons of it. You cannot go wrong with eating nutrition rich food, can you? I’ve never met an obese person who said, “I got fat eating veggies and fresh fish.”
A healthy lifestyle for children demands they eat nutrition rich food all the time. They are growing and changing, their bodies need to be fed healthy foods and lots of it.
Parents choose the food that determines a healthy lifestyle for their children. Parent’s food choices create a healthy lifestyle for children not the other way around.
#6 Developing Passion: Creating a healthy lifestyle for children is an inside-out process. Kids have varying degrees of passion and are often passionate about some things. However, passion is passion. You want your kids to be passionate so that passion is who they are, not something they do.
Some kids are passionate about golf, Baseball, math — but what about the rest of their lives? Creating a healthy lifestyle for children means that whatever and wherever kids are, they are infusing passion into that area of their life. Does that make sense?
Passion is not something that is taught in schools, nor can it really be taught. At the very least, kids should be able to start identifying their passions at an early age. I would rather have a child who is passionate about who she is, about life, about people and humanity, than a child who is just passionate about one thing.
Why? Creating and living a healthy lifestyle for children is about experiencing passion no matter what they are doing. It simply creates a well-rounded child and a purposeful and successful adult.
Parents can begin creating a healthy lifestyle for children by engaging in a curious conversation about the following:
- What makes you feel happy?
- What makes you feel like you having fun?
- What about these things do you really like?
- Which ones do you really like the most?
- If you could spend the rest of your life doing just one healthy thing, what would it be and why?
These questions support creating and living a healthy lifestyle because they inspire and ignite children into realizing what’s really underneath what they are doing. It’s passion that creates the feeling of being ALIVE, AWAKE and turned on. Passion is the KEY to creating a healthy lifestyle for children.
#7 Emotional Leadership: Definitely not taught at school and it should be. Children spend 12+ years in school and they are encouraged to become emotionally resilient.
I am going to refer back to the consultative parent. Consulting with your children to help them understand emotions, to discuss them, and for parents to be able to provide strategies for their children so they can learn to manage, overcome and communicate their own emotions is vital to creating a healthy lifestyle for children.
Kids do experience stress, more so now than ever. They are pressured more in school and in this chaotic world we live in.
A child’s ability to lead his or her own emotions determines if they will choose, focus and stay consistent with living a healthy lifestyle or not. Like many parents, when children’s emotions change, so do their actions, attitudes and thoughts. Emotional resilience is a child’s ability to see through their fear.
Of all the doctors I have coached, not one reported to me, “John Doe died because he felt scared.” Just telling your kids it’s okay to experience fear is NOT enough; discussing it, shifting that energy into love, passion and determination will benefit them for life.
Living a healthy lifestyle for children is determined by how well a parent creates emotional intelligence for their child. I would recommend reading the book, The Mouse, The Monster and Me, found on my website www.EveryChildHealthy.com .
Creating a healthy lifestyle for children means exploring feelings, not analyzing or rationalizing. Explore, discover and act from a place of passion and resilience.
#8 Responsibility: “If your child does what you tell them, does that mean your child is responsible?”
“If they do all their chores and homework, does that mean your children are responsible?”
Not necessarily. Children do what is asked to be accepted, to be loved and to not upset mom and dad –but that does not necessarily mean they are responsible. You’ll know if they are responsible when they make smart decisions and follow through when they are NOT asked and no one is watching them.
Responsibility is simply a child’s ability to respond, not react. Living a healthy lifestyle for children is about willingly choosing to act consciously rather than being told what to do.
Telling your child what to do inactivates their brain and does not create responsibility; in fact, it makes the parent more stressed and responsible.
In order to live a healthy lifestyle, parents need to keep their children’s challenges their challenges and consult with them. If you take your child’s problems away from them, rescue them or tell them what to do, you’re taking away your child’s ability to build their responsibility muscles.
Living a healthy lifestyle for children means solving some of their own challenges, physically, emotionally and mentally. They want to be challenged and succeed, and the more success they can have in their early life, the more success they will have as an adult.
Responsibility is power and a healthy lifestyle for children means parents need to start believing, trusting and having faith in their ability early on.
#9 Down Time: Down time is incredible important. A healthy lifestyle for children means making sure kids take a break, quiet their minds and simply relax.
Can you imagine how your life would be affected if you had learned how to quiet your mind as a child?
Or how to relax deeply and be totally present?
Stress would not be the #1 reason for dis-ease and physical & emotional problems in the world today.
Kids are more stressed and pressured today than ever. They’ve got to learn to be able to relax and reflect.
Recently my daughter had a headache, which rarely occurs. The easy way would be to give her Motrin and move on. Instead I had her sit in my lap and focus on breathing. Then I said, “Describe the headache you have.”
15 minutes later she opened her eyes and the headache was gone. She’s 4 years old. Learning, school, making new friends and growing all at the same time is tough. Her body needed to relax and rejuvenate. Now she knows how to act responsibly and to listen to her body so she can take care of herself.
A healthy lifestyle for children means time to relax and reflect. It plays a major role in taking responsibility for their lives and being able to rejuvenate their body, minds and spirits.
#10 Friendship & Socialization: The quality of socialization has changed from riding bikes after school to text messaging friends and emails. This has caused kids to have more challenges with “in person” relationships and socialization. A healthy lifestyle for children means they still need to learn basic rapport skills, conflict skills and being in authentic face-to-face relationships.
To combat this, it’s best to continue to arrange chat time with your kids. The average American family spends 38 minutes per week “talking with their kids in meaningful conversation.” To create and live a healthy lifestyle for children, 15 minutes per day is a great start and is nearly 3x the average time.
Healthy lifestyle children’s camps are a fabulous way for children to create new relationships, and to develop them and sustain them — as long as camps are actually teaching these skills in a productive fashion. Its been my experience that most of the real learning in camps is incidental, not intentional, when it comes to the development and life skills kids are capable of learning, and camps should provide.
But then again, most camps don’t have a camp leader, only hired older kids looking for a summer job.
I would recommend the following for creating and living a healthy lifestyle for children:
- Public speaking
- Camps
- Kids nights in your local town
- 15 minute date nights with your kids
- Fun activities with family
- Camping or competitions in your local area
- Crossfit for kids
There are many camps, and there are more qualified than the average camps out there, that actually teach kids skills, success principles and strategies they can use in their life now and as an adult. See my camps page at www.EveryChildHealthy.com
#11 Environment: We all know children are creatures of habit in their environment. Creating and living a healthy lifestyle for children does depend on the feelings, atmosphere and support in a child’s environment.
Although a sponge can soak up anything, it can only take so much. Children are the same way; they can only take so much positive and or negative stimulation.
Parents have called me to discuss why their child is not sleeping, or showing signs of ADD. Too many doctors make the mistake of NEVER asking about a child’s diet, home environment, parental and sibling relationship before jumping the gun and labeling a child ADD.
One parent in particular, Tina, told me that once she changed the energy in her daughter’s room her nightmares went away.
Another parent, Dr. Rick, shared with me, “once we changed the colors to our house, reduced electronics and ate more Paleo type foods, my son was able to come off Ritalin in 6 months.”
Environment is the major player in transformation, improving one’s life, self-esteem and creating a healthy lifestyle for children.
In order to create a healthy lifestyle for children, there are three things to look at to reduce stress and chaos, and improve health and well-being: People: the people in the environment play a role in how they affect kids, for better or worse.
- Things: items, colors, furniture, food, electronics and other tangible things in the environment can cause children to react either positively or negatively.
- Places: There are some places where children feel safer than other places. Identify those places and do your best to create a healthy lifestyle house so your child feels safe and empowered in every area of their environment.
A healthy lifestyle for children can be achieved in doing any of the above tips, but if the environment is hindering a healthy lifestyle for children, then true change won’t happen for the long term.
A healthy lifestyle for children can be obtained successfully and simply. It truly does not take a lot of time. It requires energy and effort. It’s both healthy for the parents and kids.
Parents can reduce the stresses that parenting often brings by making a commitment to creating, living and enjoying a healthy lifestyle for children.
Many thanks to my team members at EveryChildHealthy, for their participation in creating these tips.
Blessings,
Coach Carl
No comments:
Post a Comment