Healthy for Life
Nurturing your child's growing body and mind.
We know what early learning can mean to a child starting school. But what does it mean to a child starting life? Plenty, it turns out. Young kids are watching us —their parents — for cues about how to take care of their bodies and manage their emotions. Fortunately, new research gives parents great clues about which kinds of messages to send. Here are five habits that experts say will give your child a head start on a healthy future. We've also included Sesame Seed tips that share insights from our advisers.
Healthy habit #1: Get movin'
The number of U.S. children who are overweight has more than doubled in the past ten years. And it's no wonder when you consider the epidemic of inactivity among young kids. Fewer than one in four children gets 20 minutes of vigorous activity every day of the week, according to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education in Reston, Virginia. Meanwhile, kids spend an average of 17 hours a week watching TV, according to the American Heart Association in Dallas. That's in addition to the time they already spend playing video and computer games.
Encouraging your child to be active early on will lessen his chances of becoming overweight. "It will also increase the likelihood that he'll remain active as he grows older," says Reginald Washington, M.D., chairman of the Committee on Sports Medicine and Fitness for the American Academy of Pediatrics in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. And the payoff? Regular exercise will help lower your child's risks for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer.
But the idea isn't to train kids in specific sports at a young age. Kids should be age 5 or older for that, notes Dr. Washington. Instead, getting young children to be active means giving them lots of opportunity to run around freely, to learn to throw, kick, and catch different-size balls, and to just be happy, active kids.
"Every child is born with a love of movement," explains Rae Pica, a movement education consultant in Center Barnstead, New Hampshire, and an adviser to Sesame Street. "If kids don't have the opportunity to move, that love of movement gets squished out of them."
Try this movin'-to-the-beat activity. Play tapes with different styles of music and invite your child and a pal to dance until you hit the pause button. When they hear the music stop, they should freeze. Then have the "statues" come to life when the music starts again. "Kids naturally want to move to music," says Pica. "It speaks to something inside them."
Healthy habit #2: Watch those portion sizes
As a parent, you try to offer your child nutritious foods to eat -- and you may worry now and then about whether she's eating enough. But you shouldn't push her to become a member of the "clean plate club." "Most young kids have a natural instinct for when to stop eating," says Tammy Baker, a registered dietician and spokesperson for the Chicago-based American Dietetic Association. "Studies have found that kids who are allowed to make choices about how much to eat are less likely to become heavy as adults."
That natural instinct to eat just enough to satisfy hunger can disappear, however, when parents serve kids overly large portions or push them to eat more. A recent study at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, found that when 3-year-olds were given a larger-than-normal serving of macaroni and cheese, they ate only until their hunger was satisfied. 5-year-olds, on the other hand, chowed down to excess. "Younger kids are still listening to their bodies," explains study co-author Barbara J. Rolls, Ph.D. "What's happening between ages 3 and 5 is that kids are being taught to pay attention to outside cues. They're being rewarded for cleaning their plate or for eating as much as they're asked to."
The solution: Serve your child one tablespoon of each food for each year of her age (up to age 6). For example, serve your 3-year-old the equivalent of three tablespoons of chicken, three tablespoons of pasta, and three tablespoons of peas for dinner. Equally important, don't feed into the emotional issue of eating. "If your child is upset about something, go for a walk together instead of giving her candy," says Kathleen Zelman, a registered dietician in Atlanta. "Try not to teach her that food equals comfort. That sets up a lifelong problematic behavior."
Healthy habit #3: make smart food choices
When it comes to developing healthy eating habits, it's not enough to pay attention to quantity -- quality counts, too. If given their druthers, many preschoolers would eat the same foods day after day. But it's a mistake to let them. Because of this tendency and other factors, most children are flunking their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for many nutrients. Among kids ages 9 and under, 47 percent don't meet the RDA for calcium, 68 percent don't meet it for vitamin E, and 33 percent don't meet it for iron. Meanwhile, 21 percent of kids under age 11 consume less than one serving of vegetables per day, and 29 percent of kids ages 2 to 5 eat less than one serving of fruit a day. (The USDA's Food Guide Pyramid recommends that kids eat between three and five servings of vegetables and between two and four servings of fruit each day.)
But the good news is that kids' taste buds change over time, and their food preferences develop through repeated exposure to various foods. So serve green beans, broccoli, and the like, and have a one- or two-bite rule. "Research has found that it often takes eight to ten times of trying a new food before kids acquire a taste for it," says Baker. And keep in mind, "parents are the best role models -- you can't ask kids to eat spinach and not eat it yourself."
One way to make wholesome foods appealing is to make up catchy songs about them. You could also sing one of the healthy food songs you hear on Sesame Street, like The Veggie Dance or I Eat the Colors of the Rainbow.
Healthy habit #4: Learn to manage anger
When you have less experience in the world, you can be especially vulnerable to angry outbursts. "Young children often get angry when they can't get something they want or when they have something taken away," says Lilian Katz, Ph.D., an adviser to Sesame Workshop and the director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
"Learning to cope with anger successfully has all sorts of implications for how well a child gets along with her peers," says Dr. Katz. It has an effect on the body as well. For example, in a recent study involving adolescents, researchers at the University of Tampa in Florida found that not being able to handle anger constructively was associated with an increased likelihood to engage in destructive behavior like drinking alcohol and being sedentary.
How to help your child learn to defuse her anger? For starters, check your own behavior. "If you and your partner typically handle conflict by yelling at each other, or if you hit the steering wheel and curse when you're stuck in traffic, your child is likely to develop similar ways of operating," says Sheila Ribordy, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, who specializes in children's emotions. When your child becomes angry, acknowledge her feelings so that she feels understood ("I know you're upset because you can't watch TV"), but enforce the rules nonetheless. This teaches a child that it's natural to feel angry or frustrated, but that she can't always have what she wants.
Whenever possible, promote problem-solving behavior so that your child will learn how to resolve conflicts on her own. Help her think of other ways to remedy the situation without losing her cool. ("Instead of pushing your brother, what could you have done to stop him from playing with your doll?")
It's also a good idea to teach your child that when she's angry, it's OK to have a cooling-off period. This is a time when she can sit quietly in a comfortable place and play with a toy or look at a book until she feels better.
Healthy habit #5: Try, try again
In addition to teaching kids how to manage anger, it's important to give young children the tools they'll need to rebound from adversity. "Frustration, failure, disappointments, and loss are a part of life," says Sybil Wolin, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist in Washington, D.C., who has studied resilience in children. "Getting through life requires the ability to move on and learn from those experiences."
Researchers, including Dr. Wolin, have found that children who have overcome formidable obstacles in their lives—ranging from poverty to substance abuse in their families—tend to have certain traits in common. They're able to build healthy social relationships, whether it's with family members, friends, or other adults in their lives. They often use their creativity and sense of humor to help them cope with problems. And they don't give up easily; when one strategy doesn't work in a particular situation, they're willing to try again another way.
Fortunately, you can take steps to encourage your child to develop these ways of thinking from an early age. To foster a resilient mindset, "acknowledge your child's strengths," says Sesame Street Parents' adviser Robert Brooks, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston and a co-author of the forthcoming book Raising Resilient Children (Contemporary Books). "Every child has 'islands of competence.' We, as parents, have to reinforce them, instead of just focusing on what children do wrong." Similarly, try to minimize a child's fear of making errors by helping him see that mistakes can serve as vital learning experiences. ("It was amazing how tall you made the block tower. What can you do next time to make it stronger?")
Another way to foster this can-do spirit is to enlist your child's help with responsibilities around the house. Preschoolers, for example, can help sort the socks on laundry day. "There's almost an inborn need in children to want to help," notes Dr. Brooks. "By encouraging your child's sense of responsibility toward others, you teach him that he can make a difference in this world." And that feeling can do wonders for a child's sense of well-being.
Pass along these healthy habits and you'll give your child an incredibly valuable gift. Not only will you boost his physical and emotional well-being today, but you'll increase the odds that these benefits will be his tomorrow, the next day—and for life.
Stacey Colino, the mother of one, is a freelance writer living in San Francisco.
