The Importance of Healthy Living with Kids

The Importance of Healthy Living with Kids

            Come on we can do it! Wow you’re such a strong girl! My Goodness are you going to be big and strong like Papa? Now how do you know you don’t like it if you don’t try it! Eat Child, eat!

            These are a few of the phrases I utter all the time. I seem to remember my mom saying a few of them a lot too…  So healthy living... Its not just for when your grown up and need to tone, or lose a few pounds, nope healthy habits (should!) start young and be carried with us the rest of our lives. I am going to write it in 3 parts; Food, Exercise, and cleanliness.

                                                                        

            I want to start with food. What are you feeding your children? How much are you feeding them? Do you have variety? Is it what you would eat? So often I see young parents (and not so young parents) serving the same three or four meals all the time, because it’s easy. The kids already like it, its simple to make, its convenient, or you don’t want to deal with the “hassle” of getting the first 5 or so bites through your child’s mouth. I have been a nanny for a long time, and I’ve heard so many excuses, I’ve seen the temper tantrums over change, and I’ve experienced the difficulty of helping kids break years of bad eating habits. In our house growing up “picky” eating wasn’t an option. You ate what was put in front of you, or you ate it at the next meal, or went straight to bed, or sometimes both. Only one of us (who shall go un-named! But you know who you are!!) tried to go the picky eater route. This sibling would faint if the food was not what they wanted to eat, and believe it or not it worked once! However, after the second faint Mom and Dad caught on and that was the end of that. I hear moms complain that they are making 2-3 different dinners a night cause Johnny doesn't “like” anything but Mac-and-Cheese, and little Suzie only eats spaghetti-ohs. Please, if you truly care for your children, stop enabling their bad eating bad habits! You are not a chef, it’s not your job to provide multiple choices. Make one meal for the whole family, put it front of them, and if there is any complaining pack it up for later and send the offending party to bed. Because, honestly that’s what it is when they complain about the food put in front of them, offending. You wouldn't want to go to a friend’s house and have your child tell the host that the food put in front of them is “yucky” or “disgusting”, you would be mortified by your child’s rudeness to that person, so don’t let them be rude to you. I have worked with kids that when I started watching them they ate 3 meals, maybe 4, the Mom made different foods for all of them, and if she put something in front of one of the kids and they started the crying and “I don’t want that!” she would take it away and make them something else. It took me awhile to get the kids to not cry and throw temper tantrums when I put the same thing in front of all of them, and even longer to get them to eat the new foods I put in front of them. We actually went cold turkey, and I cut out all of those "have to have" meals completely from their diets. After a time they started not only eating the new foods I put in front of them, but actually discovered that they like different foods. You can teach your children to eat new foods, it will just take time, patience, and discipline to not cave into pressure.

                                                                                

            How much are you feeding your child? And how is the plate portioned out? I try to make sure that the plates I serve to children are heavy on the vegetables, fruits, meats, light on the breads and pastas. If I serve Mac-and-Cheese, I throw in Peas and Poppy Seeds, and sometimes Ham. On the plate I put plenty of raw red bell pepper and some sort of fruit, like apple slices, or a banana. They don’t need bread or crackers with Mac-and-Cheese, there’s already pasta. One of the new favorites is a chef salad, and all the kids I watch have a different way that they like it. One of them likes extra cheese, one likes lots of red bell pepper, one likes no dressing, and another likes extra bacon. Little things like that are fine to do for your children, as long as it’s a treat not a right. Experiment with vegetables, some kids like them cooked, but I notice that most kids prefer them raw, and there’s nothing wrong with raw in fact, sometimes its healthier. Studies show you should have at least 50% of your plate as a vegetable or fruit, 25% as a meat or protein, and the last part a grain or starch. When the kids ask for more do you end up just giving more starches or breads? Or do you put greens (or other bright colors) on the plate? I try to make the plate pretty and colorful. Another thing I’ve noticed is desserts. Desserts are not supposed to be an every night occasion; in fact they should be a special treat. One of things that I thought was absolutely brilliant with one of the families I’ve been with, was that “dessert” was organic yogurt with fruit on it. The kids preferred it over other sweets. As far as they are concerned it is dessert, which is a great healthy habit to have.

                                                                          

            Do you have variety? I kind of hit on this earlier, but it bears saying again. Make new food. Don’t know what to make or where to find it. Spoonful.com is an amazing website that has so many healthy recipes (and its amazing!!!! Crafts, party ideas, cooking etc! my favorite site for everything!) Or if you want to challenge yourself, go buy a Cookbook and cook your way through it! My mom when she first got married couldn’t cook (ask my dad about that!), but just because she wasn't experienced in the kitchen didn't mean that she laid back and said “I can’t!” Nope she taught herself and it took some time, but now my Mom is an amazing cook. In fact she has written a few cookbooks that you could cook your way through. Some fun cooking projects to do are theme weeks. My current family was leaving for Mexico for 10 days, so a few weeks before they left we cooked all “Mexican” foods. The kids loved it. Since then we’ve done an Asian theme, an Italian theme, and April fools day was awesome!

            Is it what you would eat? Are you eating healthy as an example to your kids? They notice if you sneak cookies instead of an apple, or load the potatoes on your plate and skip the vegetables, or drink soda all the time instead of water or milk. Drinks are just as important as the solid foods we put in our bodies. You should be drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water a day. Example, if you weigh 150 pounds you should drink 75 ounces of water. Something I like to do to add flavor to my water, is to cut up lemon and strawberries and let it sit in water overnight, then I drink it during the next day and just add more water as needed. Do they see you yo-yoing from one diet to the next? I remember my parents doing the Atkins diet, Weight Watchers, and some other ones that I can’t remember the names of. I watched my parent’s make themselves miserable with some of these “diets” that quite frankly weren’t balanced healthy lifestyle choices. Now my parents strive for balance, watch what’s on their plates, and they’re much healthier. So many of the diets out there are not good for your body and it sends a conflicting message to our children as to what healthy eating habits are. I understand that sometimes our body needs a kick start to lose weight, but make sure that its healthy for you, and that it’s a good example for your children. Getting skinny should never be the goal, being happy and healthy should be what we strive for, and this should be the lifestyle that we show our children. Not just in eating, but in what we put in our body, how much we put in our body, and how often.