Snacking has become a feature in the routine of most families every day. Due to the fact that finding time for a healthy meal is a difficult task, snacking has become a major feature in most of our diets. It is essential to keep on top of snacking, however, and make sure that what we do consume between regular mealtimes is healthy and good for our bodies. Of course, this is also true when it comes to our children, and ensuring their health and well being can be an even trickier task. Kids bodies need sources of energy to keep them active, and to help them grow and develop into adolescence and adulthood. Additionally, with the increasing problem of obesity in children, it is essential to ensure you child has only the best of healthy snacks throughout the day.
The first consideration to take into account is your child's happiness. Achieving a balance between healthy living and a happy child is something many parents adopting the gung-ho 'my way or no way' approach fail to reach. Not only is this antiquated parenting, but it is also a sure-fire way to turn your child off healthy living. Don't completely ban treats, but keep them to a minimum. Think of everything in balance and moderation as the best way to achieve a healthy diet.
A good place to start is with introducing fruit and vegetables. Experts tell us that we should consume a minimum of five portions daily, and this might at first seem like a high hurdle to meet. However, by introducing vegetables into every meal, and promoting fruit as the alternative choice between times, you can sneak in those added portions, and they really do add up. It's also a good idea to maintain an open mind yourself, and to experiment with other fruits and vegetables until you find something appealing to your child's taste-buds. After a while, fruit and vegetables will become an engrained part of daily life, and will be something your children crave at every opportunity. Until that point however, it is best to take a sensible approach to your child's healthy eating plan.
Healthy eating is a scary phrase for most adults, and for children, it can be even more daunting. It's up to you as the parent to enforce healthy eating through making sensible life choices, and it's also important to ensure your child understands the need for a healthy balances lifestyle.
Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles for http://fitnessandourworld.com/ - In addition, Jonathon also writes articles for http://universeofbeauty.net/ and http://fitness-talk.net/
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Parenting Challenge: What's Wrong with Kids Today?
We seldom want to look at the statistics about suicide in children and young people, but they are important to consider. As parents and educators we tend to ignore this subject, pretending it doesn't happen in "good" families. The belief is that suicide happens only
in troubled families to troubled children.
At the ChildSpirit Conference I attended in November, Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of numerous books including The Magical Child, gave us a startling statistic. "Suicide is the third leading cause of death among children and young people". This number includes only the young people who succeed, not those who attempt and live.
He said this is unprecedented in the history of humankind. Never before have we witnessed children ending their own life in such numbers.*Additional figures from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: "Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for 5-to-14-year-olds."
These are shocking statistics! They cry out for us to wake and to pay attention. Most of us never think of children ages 5 - 14 committing suicide.
Child and youth suicide is important because it is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the water's surface are all the other expressions of emotional dis-ease in children. These include ADD, teen's dropping out of school, over-weight children, depression, anxiety, excessive time playing video games, defiance, tantrums and emotional upsets.
The fact that suicide rates in young people are higher than they have ever been in the human history indicates the pervasiveness of the problem. It demands our attention, not because your child will commit suicide some day, but because your child is being raised in
the same emotional cultural stew.
In the last two months, I heard about the suicides of two men in their early twenties that shocked their families and those who knew them. Both men were highly successful and were leaders in their field. To everyone around them, they appeared happy and to be living full lives.
Yet something was seriously wrong with their internal experience of themselves and of life. Reason tells us, suicide is not something that is done lightly and for insignificant reasons. It is an act of desperation, of seeing no other way. It is the ultimate expression of profound loss, futility, failure, powerlessness, hopelessness, or anger.
Our culture tends to ignore emotional pain and discomfort. We ask children to suppress their unhappy feelings and then place extreme pressures on them to succeed and to meet society's and our standards. We ask them to be someone other than who they are, and then wonder why they do irrational, hurtful things.
We all love and enjoy the innocence and tenderness of young children. We want them to keep it forever. This innocence and tenderness is based on their emotional sensitivity, their connection with their feelings and their awareness of the feelings of others.
Acts of suicide and violence in children are cries for us to wake up as individuals and as a society. What's wrong with young people today? Nothing. Children are as loving, brilliant, and joyous as ever.
What's wrong with young people are their relationships with important adults in their lives, their relationship with themselves, traditional models of education and the emotional environment in which they are being raised. When we ignore a child's emotional wholeness, we do it at our peril.
In order for young people to flourish emotionally, they need several things. They need safe relationships where they can be who they are and where they can honestly talk about their needs, desires and feelings.
They need internal strategies to handle the emotionally painful times. They need people who believe in them always. They need a strong, positive ground of being within themselves.
How can you give this to your child and to your students? Begin today to pay attention to the emotional wholeness of your child. Gain understanding and develop approaches that nurture his positive experience of himself and of life. Give him the nurturing and tools he needs for a joyous, fulfilling life.
Your child's emotional wholeness is the foundation for her life. When her emotional wholeness is strong and clear, she can accomplish so much and be fulfilled and happy as a person. This is the most important gift you can give your child and your students.
You lay an emotional foundation for your child, whether you are aware of it or not. Every interaction with your child and every experience she has in life creates the emotional environment in which she develops.
These experiences help her build strong emotional resources or they weaken her internal resilience and ability to flourish. This is true whether your child is six weeks, 6 years or 16 years old.
Commit today to making your child's emotional wholeness a priority. Then watch what new things you discover and what experiences occur in your child's life and in your own.
Connie Allen, M.A. of Joy with Children. Connie helps parents and educators who are unsure how to best empower their child. . For information on how you can nurture the joyous inner spirit of children, subscribe to her free e-newsletter "Joy with Children" at http://www.joywithchildren.com
in troubled families to troubled children.
At the ChildSpirit Conference I attended in November, Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of numerous books including The Magical Child, gave us a startling statistic. "Suicide is the third leading cause of death among children and young people". This number includes only the young people who succeed, not those who attempt and live.
He said this is unprecedented in the history of humankind. Never before have we witnessed children ending their own life in such numbers.*Additional figures from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: "Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for 5-to-14-year-olds."
These are shocking statistics! They cry out for us to wake and to pay attention. Most of us never think of children ages 5 - 14 committing suicide.
Child and youth suicide is important because it is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the water's surface are all the other expressions of emotional dis-ease in children. These include ADD, teen's dropping out of school, over-weight children, depression, anxiety, excessive time playing video games, defiance, tantrums and emotional upsets.
The fact that suicide rates in young people are higher than they have ever been in the human history indicates the pervasiveness of the problem. It demands our attention, not because your child will commit suicide some day, but because your child is being raised in
the same emotional cultural stew.
In the last two months, I heard about the suicides of two men in their early twenties that shocked their families and those who knew them. Both men were highly successful and were leaders in their field. To everyone around them, they appeared happy and to be living full lives.
Yet something was seriously wrong with their internal experience of themselves and of life. Reason tells us, suicide is not something that is done lightly and for insignificant reasons. It is an act of desperation, of seeing no other way. It is the ultimate expression of profound loss, futility, failure, powerlessness, hopelessness, or anger.
Our culture tends to ignore emotional pain and discomfort. We ask children to suppress their unhappy feelings and then place extreme pressures on them to succeed and to meet society's and our standards. We ask them to be someone other than who they are, and then wonder why they do irrational, hurtful things.
We all love and enjoy the innocence and tenderness of young children. We want them to keep it forever. This innocence and tenderness is based on their emotional sensitivity, their connection with their feelings and their awareness of the feelings of others.
Acts of suicide and violence in children are cries for us to wake up as individuals and as a society. What's wrong with young people today? Nothing. Children are as loving, brilliant, and joyous as ever.
What's wrong with young people are their relationships with important adults in their lives, their relationship with themselves, traditional models of education and the emotional environment in which they are being raised. When we ignore a child's emotional wholeness, we do it at our peril.
In order for young people to flourish emotionally, they need several things. They need safe relationships where they can be who they are and where they can honestly talk about their needs, desires and feelings.
They need internal strategies to handle the emotionally painful times. They need people who believe in them always. They need a strong, positive ground of being within themselves.
How can you give this to your child and to your students? Begin today to pay attention to the emotional wholeness of your child. Gain understanding and develop approaches that nurture his positive experience of himself and of life. Give him the nurturing and tools he needs for a joyous, fulfilling life.
Your child's emotional wholeness is the foundation for her life. When her emotional wholeness is strong and clear, she can accomplish so much and be fulfilled and happy as a person. This is the most important gift you can give your child and your students.
You lay an emotional foundation for your child, whether you are aware of it or not. Every interaction with your child and every experience she has in life creates the emotional environment in which she develops.
These experiences help her build strong emotional resources or they weaken her internal resilience and ability to flourish. This is true whether your child is six weeks, 6 years or 16 years old.
Commit today to making your child's emotional wholeness a priority. Then watch what new things you discover and what experiences occur in your child's life and in your own.
Connie Allen, M.A. of Joy with Children. Connie helps parents and educators who are unsure how to best empower their child. . For information on how you can nurture the joyous inner spirit of children, subscribe to her free e-newsletter "Joy with Children" at http://www.joywithchildren.com
The Development of A Baby's Mind Through Stimulation
Every parent wants what is best in life for their children and as a result they strive hard to give their babies the best possible start in life. It is now a widely accepted fact that you must stimulate a young baby's mind from an early an age as possible. Parents want the best possible education for their children and in order to achieve this, they have to get them into the best performing schools.
In their quest to provide them with a good education many parents start educating their own children in the home. In the past this began when the child was able to walk and talk. The process now begins as soon as the baby comes home from hospital by providing the baby with objects that will stimulate their mind.
Many parents now purchase interactive toys for their babies. Research has shown that babies react to bright coloured toys. There is now a vast choice of new baby toys available all brightly coloured. Many new baby soft toys now have microchips imbedded inside them. This enables the toys to talk or even sing a lullaby. The new baby quickly picks up the sound of the toy and soon learns how to interact with it. This process is now so advanced that the microchips are produced in many different languages. As a result a baby in England can learn the same lullaby as a baby in China, each baby hearing the lullaby in their own country's mother tongue.
Traditional baby toys are still popular with the time old favourites being the ones that rattle. The baby again interacts with these toys learning how to rattle them and where the rattle comes from. In the same way as modern baby toys, some of the old fashioned baby toys also help to stimulate a baby's mind.
The one thing that all of these toys have in common is the ability to make the baby inquisitive and there by speeding up their thought process. The key to the successful mind development of a baby is to make sure that they enjoy the process and that they regard it as a game. Provide them with toys that are cute, cuddly, noisy and colourful. Slowly introduce more toys and games and make the learning process a fun event. The trick is to interact with the baby when playing these games there by not making it a chore or bore to the young child. By providing them with the correct range of toys you can easily teach them about colours, counting and animals while at the same time and most importantly still allowing them to be a baby.
As the baby grows older you can slowly introduce more educationally slanted games and begin to expand your baby's mind in a fun but subtle way. Encourage the baby to interact with the toys and also interact with you. It is soon very easy to introduce counting games and also to teach the alphabet. There is no better way of doing this than of reading the baby stories.
The use of expression and laughter helps to keep the babies attention. As the child grows older, you should then involve them more in the story but naming one of the characters after them.
By combining and introducing some of the above techniques is a fun way of helping your baby grow up and their mind develop. There are now many baby toys to choose from that are not only fun for the baby but also educationally simulative. It makes sense to take advantage of these toys and providing your baby with the best possible starts in life.
Andrew Gibson is MD of The Card and Gift Company. It is one of the fastest growing online retailers of new baby cards and gifts. To see an example of why The Card and Gift Company is growing so rapidly have a look at http://www.thecardandgiftcompany.co.uk/Gifts/ByEvent/Baby
In their quest to provide them with a good education many parents start educating their own children in the home. In the past this began when the child was able to walk and talk. The process now begins as soon as the baby comes home from hospital by providing the baby with objects that will stimulate their mind.
Many parents now purchase interactive toys for their babies. Research has shown that babies react to bright coloured toys. There is now a vast choice of new baby toys available all brightly coloured. Many new baby soft toys now have microchips imbedded inside them. This enables the toys to talk or even sing a lullaby. The new baby quickly picks up the sound of the toy and soon learns how to interact with it. This process is now so advanced that the microchips are produced in many different languages. As a result a baby in England can learn the same lullaby as a baby in China, each baby hearing the lullaby in their own country's mother tongue.
Traditional baby toys are still popular with the time old favourites being the ones that rattle. The baby again interacts with these toys learning how to rattle them and where the rattle comes from. In the same way as modern baby toys, some of the old fashioned baby toys also help to stimulate a baby's mind.
The one thing that all of these toys have in common is the ability to make the baby inquisitive and there by speeding up their thought process. The key to the successful mind development of a baby is to make sure that they enjoy the process and that they regard it as a game. Provide them with toys that are cute, cuddly, noisy and colourful. Slowly introduce more toys and games and make the learning process a fun event. The trick is to interact with the baby when playing these games there by not making it a chore or bore to the young child. By providing them with the correct range of toys you can easily teach them about colours, counting and animals while at the same time and most importantly still allowing them to be a baby.
As the baby grows older you can slowly introduce more educationally slanted games and begin to expand your baby's mind in a fun but subtle way. Encourage the baby to interact with the toys and also interact with you. It is soon very easy to introduce counting games and also to teach the alphabet. There is no better way of doing this than of reading the baby stories.
The use of expression and laughter helps to keep the babies attention. As the child grows older, you should then involve them more in the story but naming one of the characters after them.
By combining and introducing some of the above techniques is a fun way of helping your baby grow up and their mind develop. There are now many baby toys to choose from that are not only fun for the baby but also educationally simulative. It makes sense to take advantage of these toys and providing your baby with the best possible starts in life.
Andrew Gibson is MD of The Card and Gift Company. It is one of the fastest growing online retailers of new baby cards and gifts. To see an example of why The Card and Gift Company is growing so rapidly have a look at http://www.thecardandgiftcompany.co.uk/Gifts/ByEvent/Baby
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