In the busy life of parenting, it’s often easy to forget that children don’t yet have the mental capacity to be entirely responsible for their own routines. It’s easy to get frustrated when our children do or don’t do something that seems very obvious to us. You can instill habits to help your child at an early age.
Children are still learning and developing, and it can take some time for those mental pathways to set. Having a routine or schedule is the best way to instill good habits in our children, and ensure they hold onto them throughout their adult lives.
But just which habits should we be teaching our children exactly? When we think to the future, we want our children to be successful and happy, and by making sure the following habits are built into your routine or schedule, you’ll be building successful traits in your children as they grow.
Here Are 6 Habits To Help Your Child
1. Meditation
Learning to meditate at a young age is a fantastic skill to learn, as it promotes mindfulness, as well as lessening anxiety and stress. Other benefits can include increased concentration whilst learning, a calmer disposition and discipline over their own minds.
Family and children’s classes in meditation are offered in major cities, but if you’re remote or stuck to a budget, setting up meditation time at home is a quick and easy task. You can even pop on Youtube videos to watch and meditate together each day.
2. Proper Hygiene
They say cleanliness is next to Godliness. With the amount of running around, getting into a mess, and general amount of activities children do; they can get stinky easily.
By teaching good hygiene as they get older, the routine of cleanliness will continue into their adult lives once it is developed as a habit.
Shower/bath time should be at the same time every night or morning depending on your schedule, as well as brushing teeth time, washing hands before meals or after using the toilet.
These are habits we should all have developed from a young age, and your child is no exception. As they move into pubescence, body odour won’t be a problem with the good habits you’ve instilled.
3. Being Active
We know the importance of a good diet, and that goes hand in hand with being active. Inactive children can often grow up into overweight adults or develop health problems such as heart disease, high cholesterol or diabetes.
By being active with your children each day perhaps through a family walk or teaching them how to ride a bike you help them develop a good habit that may in the future be replaced with attending a gym.
Getting your child involved in a sport like dancing or athletics is even better. Helping them in the short term with self esteem and boosting their metabolism, the benefits of being active are life long and promote living longer and healthier.
4. Drink Lots Of Water
Do you get your eight glasses of water a day? Do you want your children to? It’s time to hydrate! It’s easy to fall out of the habit of drinking water, especially when there are other drinks to be had – water just doesn’t seem as interesting as something like chocolate milk.
Water is vital to ensuring our bodies and minds are running smoothly, however, and with the amount of energy kids burn, drinking water should be a top priority.
Limit other drinks you give your children and always have a fresh supply of water on hand. Your kids may be more open to drinking their daily intake if they choose their own water bottle.
Make sure they keep it with them and continuously take sips throughout the day. Make sure you’re doing the same to set a good example!
5. Reading Daily
Reading daily is one of the most important habits you should be teaching your children. If they are too young to read yet, reading to them has proven one of the most beneficial activities for their developing minds. Reading daily also increases memory, improves vocabulary and teaches focus.
6. Avoiding Sugar
The thought of expensive dental bills when we think of our kids eating lollies and sugar is enough to send even the most calm parent into a stress.
Sugar and sweets are doing other damage to your children as well, including raising their blood sugar levels which could result in future diabetes, or even creating an addiction to sugar.
By teaching your children that foods filled with sugar are treat foods only, perhaps only reserved for birthday parties and celebrations, you’ll instill better eating habits in your growing children.
When you’ve already developed a habit of eating well through childhood, it is much easier to keep these habits into adulthood, which means a healthier future for your kids.
Helping Our Kids Live Their Best Lives Through Good Habits
Of course, there are other habits we wish our kids would get into, such as picking their clothes up off the floor or making their bed. By setting these ‘for life’ habits, other good habits will start to come from them.
By eating healthy, we want to move more and vice versa. When we wash our hands regularly, we get sick less often which gives us less downtime.
Children learn by example, so if you’ve fallen out of the habit of any of the above, it’s time to start up again now! After all, it’s not just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of your entire family.
