Health Tips for Children to Improve Their Health. Good health is essential for children to develop and grow into healthy adults.
Parents often find themselves asking what more they can do to ensure their kids have good health habits. Fortunately, there are multitude of simple health tips that can be implemented to improve the overall health of kids. This article will provide an overview of some effective and easy-to-implement health tips for children. These suggestions can help create a healthier environment for kids and promote long-term health benefits.
6 Useful Tips to Improve Your Child’s Health
Manage Their Sleep Routines
An adequate amount of sleep will top the list of health tips for kids because your body needs a proper good night’s sleep to manage your overall health. With kids, the sleep requirement varies depending on their age. For example, babies will need at least 16 hours of sleep, while toddlers will require 12 to 14 hours. Kids between the ages of three to 12 will need 10 to 12 hours of sleep, and eight to nine hours are enough for kids older than that.
Make sure you form good sleeping habits, like encouraging your kids to sleep early and wake up early to form a healthy sleeping schedule.
Make Healthy Lifestyle Choices
Our health reflects the choices we make to live our life. Hence, the choices we are going to make to lead our lives will also affect our health in the long term. For example, if you are going to regularly make your child eat junk food or support a sedentary lifestyle for them, it will affect their health.
So, ensure your child is making healthy choices by feeding them nutritious food with essential vitamins, minerals, protein, and other nutrients. Make sure your child participates in extracurricular activities like outdoor sports, art, and other hobbies to maintain healthy physical as well as mental health.
Develop Healthy Personal Hygiene
Another useful tip to improve your child’s health and help them maintain a healthy life is to adopt good personal hygiene. Personal hygiene is an essential aspect of staying healthy, especially for kids.
Developing good personal hygiene habits at an early age can go a long way in preventing the spread of germs and diseases. It plays a key role in protecting kids from illnesses caused by bacteria and viruses in schools, playgrounds, and other public places. Children are more susceptible to getting sick than adults because their immune systems are still developing. By washing their hands frequently with soap and water, using hand sanitizers when necessary, covering their mouth while coughing or sneezing, brushing and flossing, washing hands before eating, after coming from outside and after using the washroom (to keep germs away from the body), rinsing their mouth after eating, and avoiding close contact with people who are sick, kids can minimize their risk of contracting illnesses.
Don’t Forget Their Regular Immunizations
Getting your kids their regular immunizations is one of the most important tips to improve their health and ensure they don’t fall ill frequently. Vaccines are designed to help protect children from various diseases that can cause serious illness or even death.
Following the recommended vaccination schedule, parents can prevent their children from contracting measles, mumps, rubella, and polio.
So, if there are any pending COVID-19 boosters or flu shots that need to be given to your child, make that doctor’s appointment immediately!
Maintain Medical Records
This health tip for kids is not directly related to improving your child’s health but contributes towards maintaining a good overtime. A part of having a child will majorly include you carrying around a bulky file that includes all their medical history – from blood tests and history of allergies to immunization records and lab test reports. But how efficient is this old-school way? Not much, if you think about it.
You are always at risk of losing an important paper or forgetting to file it and eventually not bringing it with you on your next doctor’s visit. A PHR application can help you save your child’s medical history in digital format so you can carry them along whenever needed!
Reduce Their Screen Time
In today’s digital age, kids spend more time in front of screens than ever. While technology has brought many conveniences into our lives, excessive screen time can harm young children’s health and well-being.
Reducing screen time can improve a child’s physical health. Excessive screen use can lead to sedentary behavior and lack of physical activity, which increases the risk of obesity and other related health problems. Children can develop healthier habits that promote physical fitness by encouraging outdoor playtime or engaging in active games that do not involve screens.
Blend Health with Learning
Lastly, As parents, following tips to improve your child’s health is essential. But have you ever thought that teaching your child the importance of staying healthy isn’t always supposed to be boring? Yes, you can add a touch of fun to some health lessons by mixing the two. For example, let your child identify the colours of the vegetables and fruits while eating, or you can teach them how to count when skipping the rope! See, it doesn’t need to be boring after all.
Jigar Patel
Founder, Health-e.
