This is the third post in a series of blog posts on what skills children should learn before they leave their parents’ home and go out into the real world.
Healthy Lifestyle
I don’t know too many children who have the desire to eat healthy and be physically fit. It makes a significant difference in attention, concentration, memory, and irritability. We still struggle with teaching our children to live a healthy lifestyle with proper nutrition, sleep and exercise.
Nutrition
We taught our children how to read labels. High fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils are the main ingredients we see most often and stay away from. If you can’t read it or pronounce it, it most likely is not good for you. If they want to buy something at the store, they have to read the label first to determine if it is worth asking us to buy it.
Eat raw fruits/vegetables as much as you can. We have carrots and celery available at mealtime and for snacks. Our rule is that the children eat the number of carrots/celery equal to their age. If my son is 6 years old, he has to eat 6 pieces of carrots or celery or eat the number of vegetables that is equal to half his age. That’s a math lesson, too. You decide what size to cut the vegetables. Of course, this does not apply to the parents and their ages. 
Sleep
Children require somewhere between 8 – 12 hours of sleep based on their age. If they have a test to take, we make sure they get enough sleep the night before and a good breakfast in the morning.
Exercise
We try to have our children be active in some kind of sport year round. As a family, we tried The President’s Challenge. You can sign up as a group or individual and it applies to kids, teens, adults, and seniors. You earn awards by performing regular activity beyond your daily activity goal of 30 minutes a day for adults and 60 minutes a day for youths under 18, at least 5 days per week, for a total of 6 weeks. They even include chores!
The children whine and complain about having to eat all this healthy food and having to exercise. We told them that God gave us the responsibility to keep them alive and healthy until they leave our home. Once they’re on their own, they can eat whatever they want and start paying for their own medical bills!
Anyone else have any suggestions on how to empower children to live a healthy lifestyle?
There will be one more skill children should know before leaving the nest, so stick with us…
photo credit: hobbs_luton
If you missed the last two posts, here they are:
Mimi,
This is great information! My 2-yo son loves to eat healthy stuff as I kept the sugary “bad-for-you” stuff away from him for the first year and a half of his life. Now he gets those things occasionally and is content with that. The hard part right now is incorporating exercise as a normal part of our day!
Tara
Nutrition is a challenge with my oldest. He doesn't like fruits and vegetables. Well ok maybe grapes and watermelon but that's it. The kid would live on Ramen noodles if I let him.
Tara, just keeping up with a 2 yr old is enough exercise for me!
I agree, it seems like when they get older, they tend to not want to eat healthy.
Tara, just keeping up with a 2 yr old is enough exercise for me!
I agree, it seems like when they get older, they tend to not want to eat healthy.