Educating your children about how to be healthy can be challenging and even overwhelming especially at the start. However it’s like exercising a muscle, the more you practice it, the easier it becomes. The more you do it, the more resources you will find and soon it becomes part of your life and you no longer need to think about it because it has become a habit.
Educating your children is worth your investment in time because you leave your child with a legacy of health that will be passed from your child to your children’s children. It will build a strong healthy family, strong social connections, and a good compassionate heart. It will also protect your children against the 18 dangerous health trends that are increasing and causing problems in our children.
In summary, we will cover these 9 topics:
- Start early in teaching your child about living healthy by introducing whole foods, plant-based diet, doing High Intensity Interval Exercise (HIIT), encouraging your child’s positive psychology through gratitude every day, developing strong social connections, and ensuring continuous health education.
- Discuss health with your family so everyone is on the same page: talking about health during dinner time, explaining to your child the benefits of living healthy, asking your spouse and your family to commit and take part in helping your child grow healthy, watching health videos and health documentaries as a family
- Go out of your way to catch your family doing something right, affirm them, encourage them, and explain to them how certain foods are the healthier choices.
- Spend more time with health-conscious friends and family, which help your family make healthy decisions.
- Replace Fairy Tales With Healthy Tales by choosing children’s stories that promote health and wellness
- Replace TV with health-related TV shows such as the Academy for Health Superheroes Videos
- Replace Children’s Games With Healthy Children’s Games
- Replace junk food with “healthy” delicious plant-based food snacks.
- Greater purpose through volunteering and doing charity together with your family will help you and your children live longer and healthier.
So let’s talk about each in more detail:
1. Start early in teaching your child about living healthy
a. Introduce whole foods, plant-based diet – adding more vegetables and fruits to your child’s diet will help. Prioritize whole foods instead of refined foods. Whole-food plants contain a myriad of nutrients that cannot be replaced by supplements. This includes fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.
It is normal for children to refuse vegetables because they do not like how it takes, if that’s the case, then just have them eat one bite today, then one bite tomorrow, then do it on a regular basis which will eventually develop their taste and appreciation for vegetables.
You can be playful and pretend with your child that the spoon is an airplane as it flies and delivers the vegetable to your child’s mouth. Affirm them and encourage them everytime they eat vegetables and tell them that it will make them grow up strong like their favourite superhero for boys and it will make them beautiful like their favourite actress for girls. After 7 repetitions of this, you will notice a gradual improvement.
b. High Intensity Interval Exercise (HIIT) – high intensity interval training is a type of exercise where you and your child can take 30 seconds jogging, then 30 seconds walking, then repeat the pattern 5 to 10 times each day. You can do this for any type of exercise where you do the exercise intensely, then slow down afterwards. Of course, it’s important to do proper warm up and cool down exercises. It’s also important for your child to move around and not sit for too long watching TV or playing with electronic gadgets.
c. Positive Psychology Through Gratitude – everyday at the end of each day, ask your child what he or she is grateful for, and if you keep doing this then you will find that very soon it will become a habit that your child will remember for the rest of his life. You can do this over at dinner and ask each person what they are most grateful for today. This will go a long way to developing a positive mindset for your child and it will also help your family to become appreciative of one another. Guide your family to be thankful even for the simple, priceless things in life such as being alive, such as
d. Social connection – interacting with friends and family is an important factor that will boost your child’s health, combat depression, and enable your child to handle the challenges that he or she will face while growing up. Take time to bring your child out to the playground to interact with other kids or to invite some neighbours over.
e. Continuous Health Education – with today’s negative influences in the TV, movies, schools, and peer-pressure around your child it’s easy for your child to deviate and follow wrong examples. That’s why it’s important to have a constant, continuing education about health. By starting with strong foundations as early as childhood, your child will grow up with a healthy mindset.
2. Discuss Health With Your Family So Everyone Is On The Same Page
a. Talk about health during dinner time. Putting extra effort into your child’s health education is important, that’s why spend a few minutes each day discussing the importance of living healthy with your family. Talk to your child while you are having dinner and while the family is present. It’s a good time to influence the family.
b. Explain to your child the benefits of living healthy. These include living a longer life, living a higher quality of life, and they can become strong and beautiful when they grow up. Keep repeating this and they will soon develop an understanding of the importance of living healthy.
c. Ask your spouse and your family to commit to helping your child grow healthy. This will not only help your child, it will also make a positive change towards a healthier family.
d. Watch health videos and health documentaries as a family. There’s a lot of videos and documentaries that you can watch for free on Youtube with a quick search of “Nutrition documentary” or “Health documentary”. The more you surround yourself with positive influences, the more you can guide your family to be healthy. Academy For Health Superheroes has a lot of free health podcasts, healthy nursery songs, and resources that you can rely on through our Podcasts page on our website.
3. Go out of your way to catch your family doing something right
.a. Affirm them for healthy decisions that they make and this will go a long way towards reinforcing healthy habits.
b. Tell your family and children which foods are healthier by offering them a choice. It has been found to be more effective if you say “This one is a healthier choice. Both are okay to eat, but this one is the healthier choice” rather than stopping your children from eating the bad food.
4. Spend more time with health-conscious friends and family
a. Surround yourself with family and friends who are also health-conscious because this makes it easier for you to make healthy decisions when you are surrounded by the right people.
b. Minimize time with people who are not health-conscious, because it will have an influence on how your child makes their decisions.
5. Replace Fairy Tales With Healthy Tales
Choose children’s stories that promote health and wellness. One such children’s story is from the Academy For Health Superheroes which focuses on a family adventure about health. It teaches moral lessons, friendship, and caring for others. Many of the usual fairy tales are outdated and they do not teach the values that are needed by your child to grow healthy.
6. Replace TV with health-related TV shows
a. Academy for Health Superheroes Videos – there are several videos and podcasts you can watch or listen to for free.
b. Doctor McStuffins – Doctor McStuffins is a Disney TV show about a child who yearns to become a doctor like her mother. The child treats her stuffed toys who come to life, when those stuff toys become sick she acts as their doctor who takes care of them.
7. Replace Children’s Games With Healthy Children’s Games
a. Health SuperHeroes (HSH) App – Academy for Health Superheroes app teaches kids about health in a fun and interactive way.
b. Doctor Kids – teaches toddlers how to manage a small hospital, with its doctors, dentists, and patients. This is a good way to introduce your children to the concept of health, medicine, and taking care of people.
8. Replace junk food with “healthy” delicious snacks
q. Academy For Health Superheroes has a cookbook for children of healthy but delicious food that they can eat. It’s called the “Healthy Junk Food Monster's Cookbook”
b. Offer your child these healthy but tasty treats:
- Avocado Chunks
- Kernels of corn
- Grapes
- Crispy apple slices
- Banana slices
- Orange wedges
- Pineapple slices
- Lettuce shreds
- Tomato wedges
- Coconut juice and coconut meat
- Carrot sticks
- Peanuts
- Green Peas
- Walnuts
- Cashews
- Sunflower and pumpkin seeds
- Roasted sweet potatoes
- Watermelon
- Jicama sticks
- Raw or steamed broccoli, very rich in probiotics
- Raw or steamed cauliflower, very rich in probiotics
- You can even create dips from peanut butter, almond butter, mashed avocado or pureed tomato
9. Greater Purpose With Your Family Will Help You And Your Children Live Longer And Healthier.
- In the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, who is the CEO of the $1 billion Zappos company that delivers happiness to its customers, he shares that his secret to happiness is at the start of the day he focuses on his greater purpose first. Then he does his work. Then he does his “rockstar” happiness, which means having fun, engaging in recreational activities, and enjoying life.
With this, one of the best ways to promote exercise with family is to do it with a greater purpose.
For example, walk with your kids as you bring packs of food and water to the homeless people. Or, bring your kids to the side of the beach as you pick up trash together. This can be a fun and quality-time activity that your children will remember for life.
Not only will it teach them compassion, kindness, and charity, it will also give them a sense of purpose and direction in their life and teach them generosity.
You can also volunteer together as a family, for example on weekends. Look for local organizations who are making a difference in your area and volunteer your time.
Studies have shown that volunteering increases overall health, increases life span, and it builds strong supportive relationships for those that are involved in volunteering.
This is why Tony Hsieh, despite having a net worth of $800+ million has chosen to live in a trailer park and he spends his time developing the neighbourhood in Las Vegas under his Downtown Project (DTP).
- One of Singapore’s oldest persons, Teresa Hsu at 113 years old says her secret to living long is staying positive, contributing, eating a healthy diet, spending a couple of hours of meditation in the morning, and doing yoga every morning. Their non-profit Heart To Heart Services provides food, clothes, and monthly cash contributions to those in need. She also runs the Home for the Aged Sick. Even at her old age, she continues to contribute to society and is very happy seeing the smiles of the people that she has helped. In an interview, she says, if she only helps herself then there is only one smile or one laugh, but when you help others, there are many smiles and many laughs. Happiness multiplies.
- Similarly, Manoj Bhargava who is the inventor of the 5-Hour-Energy drink with a net worth of $4 billion invests 99% of his fortune to charitable purposes and inventions that will help humanity.
- In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet created The Giving Pledge, where some of the world’s wealthiest individuals and families have pledged to dedicate their wealth to philantrophy. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, also added his name to this list by promising at least 50% of his net worth. That means Elon Musk would be donating over $6 billion dollars to charity before he dies.
- The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK is now promoting giving to others as one of the five steps to mental health. They encourage that volunteering at your local community can improve your mental wellbeing and help you build new social networks. The other 5 steps are: Connect with the people around you such as your family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours; be active; keep learning; give to others, and be mindful which means being aware of your present thoughts, feelings, your body, and the world around you.
You can implement these 9 healthy habits into your children’s and your family’s life:
- Start early in teaching your child about living healthy by introducing whole foods, plant-based diet , doing High Intensity Interval Exercise (HIIT), encouraging your child’s positive psychology through gratitude every day, developing strong social connections, and ensuring continuous health education.
- Discuss health with your family so everyone is on the same page: talking about health during dinner time, explaining to your child the benefits of living healthy, asking your spouse and your family to commit and take part in helping your child grow healthy, watching health videos and health documentaries as a family
- Go out of your way to catch your family doing something right, affirm them, encourage them, and explain to them how certain foods are the healthier choices.
- Spend more time with health-conscious friends and family, which help your family make healthy decisions.
- Replace Fairy Tales With Healthy Tales by choosing children’s stories that promote health and wellness such as The Academy For Health Superheroes stories.
- Replace TV with health-related TV shows such as the Academy for Health Superheroes Videos and the Disney TV Series Doctor McStuffins.
- Replace Children’s Games With Healthy Children’s Games such as the Health SuperHeroes App (HSH) and the app called Doctor Kids which teaches health and medicine concepts to toddlers.
- Replace junk food with “healthy” delicious plant-based food snacks.
- Greater purpose through volunteering and doing charity together with your family will help you and your children live longer and healthier.
To find out more about how you can guide your child through nutrition, exercise, positive psychology, and healthy lifestyle you can go to our website for more free resources, guides, videos, and podcasts at www.academyforhealthsuperheroes.com
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