Help your child get a fit body, a fat mind and a full heart

In addition to love, there are three things your child needs to thrive and be happy – a fit body, a fat mind, and a full heart. Here are some ways you can help your child achieve this:

Hacks to help your child get a fit body

A lack of exercise can cause a child to be lazy, depressed, and yes, overweight! We all spend so much time sitting in front of screens from computers to cellphones and tablets. Now is the time to get your child off the couch, and moving.

• Encourage your children to participate in school sports. For some children, one or two sports per season is sufficient. Other children thrive on more. Learn how to read your child and work out how much is enough and how much is too much.
• Be a good role model for keeping physically active. Are you going to the gym, walking, or running regularly?
• Eat good, healthy food and cut down on sugary and salty snacks. They are OK in moderation, but helping kids develop a taste for real food is the goal. It’s not just good for their bodies but for their brains too.
• Encourage your family to drink water. It’s essential replenishment for both the body and the brain, which are made up of 70% water. Water helps us feel less lethargic and presses the alert button in our brains. It’s also important for emotional balance. Don’t you feel ratty and irritated when you are desperately thirsty? That happens to kids, too!

Hacks to help your child get a fat mind

In an era of information overload, we can fall into the trap of grabbing onto information just in time, and never really reading for deeper meaning.

• Celebrate reading from a young age with your children. Do the bedtime story thing with them. Not only is it a bonding experience, but it puts reading high up in their value system.
• Be a role model and let your children see you reading for pleasure as well as for purpose.
• Visit bookshops and libraries and make sure your children have access to age-appropriate books.
• I heard a mom sharing her advice on how to encourage children to read and it was quite novel! She never paid her children for chores, but she paid them to read books!
• Discuss what your children are reading with them. Get them to paraphrase and recount what their story is all about. Ask questions to test their recall – great for comprehension skills. And ask what they think about what is going on in the story, and how it makes them feel.
• Talk about current affairs when your children are old enough. It’s good for them to know what is going on in the world.
• Teach them the map of the world – continents, countries, capital cities, landmarks, rivers, mountain ranges, etc. Then, at least they won’t have to hop on to Google in the middle of a conversation to find out where somewhere or something is.
• We need to see our children translating their knowledge into their everyday lives. That makes knowing stuff relevant and useful, develops a reading culture, and a desire to know.

Hacks to help your child get a full heart

It’s so important for children to experience joy in what they do and in the relationships they create.

• Help your children to tap into the sense of satisfaction that comes from putting in effort and creating a result, no matter how small or large that result may be.
• Get them onto the trajectory of personal progress in every area of their life (note, I did not say achievement, although that can be part of personal progress). Teach them to appreciate the lessons learnt on the journey, through the process of becoming, and not just the applause for reaching the destination.