These days, when children’s eating habits have led to an increase in obesity, parents’ responsibility to raise food-smart children has increased too.
It is the quality or the nutrition in the food we give our kids, coupled with the teaching of good habits, that will determine our kids’ health as children and later as grownups.
Read How to Raise Food-Smart Kids »
If you have a “fat” or overweight child, you know they suffer a lot from some associated problems. Many grownups carry feelings of self-loathing and self-disappointment following the negative treatment they got during their younger years.
Being fat is not only about what we eat. It’s also about what makes us eat more than what our body requires. A fat kid almost always suffers from low self-image too.
Overweight kids need a healthy, balanced eating plan, together with an emotional plan, which doesn’t damage their self-image any further.
Kids’ eating habits are very important for parents and it is very frustrating to prepare food and find out your kids do not like it.
If you look at this issue from an emotional point of view, it has to do with control. Your kids are exercising control over what and when they eat, while you try to keep that control. Once you look at it this way, though, the solution is simple.
Here are some great things that will get your kids to eat well.
Most of the parents in the world want their kids to have healthy eating habits. Nowadays, when there are so many temptations around, it makes it harder to eat only healthy food. Fortunately, the younger your kids are, the easier it is to help them establish healthy eating habits.
For years, and especially in the early years, kids are certain that the way they eat at home is THE way everyone eats. Take advantage of this and start with healthy eating early. Flexibility with food is very important for kids. Kids who are flexible with food are less likely to have eating disorders in later years.
This is great! A couple of weeks ago, I posted my thoughts on ADHD in ADHD Must Be Contagious. This started quite a bit of a discussion on a site dedicated to ADHD families, in a post titled “Life coach wonders if ADHD is contagious”.
The author, who has kids with ADHD, agreed with some of my points, but did not agree with others. Others made some strong comments, describing their own experience as hyperactive individuals or their relatives.
I believe that awareness is very important and we need to discuss our agreements and disagreements regarding ADHD in order to find a solution for us all – kids, parents and teachers.
Read The War on ADHD »
Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) is very trendy. If you search on Google, you will see that there are 34,800,000 hits for it (this is today, but I am sure tomorrow it there will be more, if only because I am adding this post…). It is amazing that as the years goes by, the percentage of kids and people with ADHD goes up.
Do you have an explanation to this?
In this post, let me try to give you some explanation to this inflation in the diagnosis of ADHD.
Read ADHD Must Be Contagious »
I recently spent some time coaching a woman suffering from Anorexia Nervosa. She weighed 32kg and would not eat to save her life!
A study in high schools in Canada found that 50% of girls were on a diet because they thought they were overweight. If your daughter is young and you think, “I’ll deal with it when she is a teen”, think again. Records show that eating disorders are increasingly seen in children as young as 10. A research in Canada in 2002 found 37% of Canadian females aged 11, 42% aged 13 and 48% aged 15 say they need to lose weight. By the way, 52% of them started dieting before the age of 14.
What can we do about it? I think we can do a lot.
Read Anorexia: Dying to Be Thin! »
Obesity in the world is increasing and numbers are a real worry. Statistics from around the world puts USA as the leading country with 30% of its population being obese, followed by Mexico with 24%, UK with 23% and Australia with 21%. Closing the list with 3% obesity are Korea and Japan.
These numbers increase every year and if, many years ago, we talked about “the overweight issue”, now we are talking about something that it is much bigger – obesity.
Many overweight people are shocked when the doctor tells them they are obese. Overweight? Yes, we are used to it, but obese?! That is a whole new game. Houston, we have a problem!
Traveling, I think, is a wonderful experience for us all. Children can benefit from travelling even more than grownups, because travelling expands their knowledge, ideas, beliefs and boundaries. Many people ask me, “Why take kids on expensive trips if they cannot remember all the details?”
So I ask them, “Do you remember all the things that made you who you are today?”
We live in a very special era. We are exposed to things today that 100 years ago we could only dream of. Think for example, 100 years ago, only lucky people living next to the ocean knew how a whale sounded. Today, every 3-year-old can tell you how a whale sounds and looks.
Technology has helped a lot to bring the world to our homes. In the beginning, there were photos, then moving picture and now live telecasts, showing things as they happen. We heave reached a point where we do not leave home and we think we can experience life through the screens of our TV and our computer.
But we cannot!
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