Children & Living A Healthy Lifestyle

Encourage children to lead a healthier lifestyle early

Most children are active all the time usually children will walk or cycle a few miles per day without even realising it when they are out with friends, but in today’s age more and more children are having weight problems to some degree.

The problems sometime correct themselves for children put on weight then have a spurt in growth and these patterns can correct themselves within a few months.

However there has been an increase over the last few years in obesity in children, this has been blamed on changes in lifestyle, more and more children are turning to computer and video games and getting less and less exercise.

So what can we do to improve our children’s health and levels of fitness? New guidelines have suggested that children should have at the very least 60 minutes per day of exercise and preferably up to several hours.

Children are the same as adults and risk the increase of diseases such as the onset of diabetes and some forms of cancer as well heart disease later in life.

We should encourage our children to:

• Participate in bouts of physical activity that lasts for 15 minutes or more each day.
• Participate each day in a variety of age appropriate physical activities.
• Discourage periods of 2 hours or more of inactivity.
• Discourage them from sitting at the computer or in front of the TV.
• Children should accumulate at least 60 minutes and preferably several hours of activity on most days of the week.

Under the new guidelines schools are encouraged to work with parents and children in raising the awareness of leading a healthier lifestyle, schools are now encouraging pupils to attend after school sports clubs and physical education lessons are being structured to make sure children learn the values of exercise.

The school’s physical education programme should:

• Expose children to a wide range of physical activities.
• Teach skills to maintain a healthy lifestyle and level of fitness.
• Encourage children to monitor themselves so they can see how active they have been.
• Play an active part as a role model.

Studies showed that the times when children were less active were between 3 and 6pm, this was when time was spent on computers and watching TV. It is thought that sometimes the children are not to blame for this but rather they do it out of boredom.

This is where parents should step in and encourage activity, suggest going for a walk or for a bike ride or to the park and kick a football around. There are many ways to be active as a family without having to spend a lot of money.