For optimal health, children must eat a diet low in sugar and high in fiber, fruits, and vegetables. For fitness and weight control, they need to exercise. For mental well-being, they must learn how to handle stress and accept their bodies. Modeling those positive habits for your children will get you halfway there. To finish the job, follow these pointers. Instill healthy body image. Unfortunately, today’s obsession with being superthin is taking root earlier and earlier in childhood. Even a first-grader is likely to believe that “thinner is better,” reports a recent Australian study of more than 500 school-age girls and boys. [sidebar]This precocious desire for thinness can lead to unhealthy eating behaviors at a time when good nutrition is critical to healthy physical development: Nearly one in three 10- to 14-year-old girls restricts her food intake, concludes a Canadian survey of 2,220. “Studies routinely find that about 40% of elementary school girls and 25% of elementary school boys are dissatisfied with their bodies,” says Linda Smolak, PhD, a Kenyon College psychologist who studies body image and eating disorder development in children and adolescents. These unhappy and self-conscious kids report more frequent feelings of depression, insecurity, and anxiety. To thwart unhealthy body image, counter the images that bombard your kids. Follow these tips: Uncover media myths. TV, movies, music videos, fashion magazines, video games, and the Internet inundate children with unfiltered, unreliable, and unrealistic messages about what is beautiful and desirable. Don’t wait for kids to ask about what they see on the screen or in photos the way you might wait for questions about how babies are made. Instead, be alert to opportunities for explaining that the ultrathin young actress or the supermuscular athlete has a body that is not realistic for most of us. Give alternatives. You might hear your daughter say, “Yuck. Look at that fat girl. She needs to be on a diet.” Respond by explaining that, although being too heavy can be unhealthy, dieting usually isn’t the solution—and being heavy doesn’t make someone yucky or bad. Tell her that instead of dieting, it’s better to eat healthful foods and move your body every day. Listen to yourself. As you’re talking to your kids about their body image, listen to those little comments you make about yourself like “I feel fat today” or “I have to lose five pounds before bathing-suit season.” Sound familiar? Remember, you’re caught up in the same culture that’s influencing your children, and what you say about your own body will strongly influence how your child sees herself, especially if she is under age 12, says Smolak. Children model their beliefs and behaviors on what you do, not on what you say they should do. More from Prevention: Build A Healthy Body Image At Any Age [pagebreak] Get them moving. From the moment kids start school, they spend more time sitting than they do moving about. By the time they’re in high school, nearly one-third of students aren’t getting the minimum hour of exercise each day considered essential by the National Institutes of Health. Research shows that inactivity not only contributes to weight gain, future susceptibility to health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, and a lifelong sedentary habit, but it also hurts kids’ academic performance. Also, a study of nearly 4,600 middle-school students found that seventh-graders who got even the bare minimum of exercise—20 minutes at least three times a week—had fewer symptoms of depression than those who were less active. The more they moved, the happier they were. If you want to encourage your kids to exercise more, get them walking. “It takes no special skill, ability, or equipment, and it works for all ages,” says Mary L. Gavin, MD, a pediatrician at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE. You’ll need to walk more yourself to set the pace as a healthy role model and to create situations in which walking arises naturally, says Kenneth H. Cooper, MD, founder of The Cooper Institute in Dallas and author of Fit Kids! The Complete Shape-Up Program from Birth through High School. Here’s how you can do both, without ever even mentioning exercise. Feed gadget love. Kids dig electronic doohickeys, so arm yours with a $10 pedometer to help her count steps. For an added incentive, log on to the President’s Challenge. Youngsters ages 6 to 17 can track daily steps and earn patches and badges. Take the Walking Bus. Thirty years ago, nearly half of all children walked to school. Today, only about 15% do. The Walking Bus program is changing that. Adult volunteers pick up kids on foot and escort them to school, then home again at day’s end. To find out more about starting your own “bus,” visit their website. Curb the chauffeuring. Don’t let teens turn you into a taxi service. The next time your older child asks to go to a friend’s house, rent a DVD, or meet buddies at a coffee shop, check the distance. If it’s less than 3 miles and safe for walking, hand over your cell phone and tell him to take to his feet. Better yet, walk him halfway.[pagebreak] Help them relax. Today’s kids may or may not face more stress than ever before; experts are divided on that point. But big-kid anxieties seem to be occurring at earlier ages. “Younger children are being pushed to be little grown-ups,” says Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD, medical director of the National Center for Children and Families in Bethesda, MD. “They have the responsibility to get the grades, do extracurricular activities, and get the test scores.” At the same time, they’re exposed to their parents’ stresses at home, plus the threat of violence at school and of terrorism in the world around them. The result? Anxiety—and more. Stress raises kids’ risk for insomnia, skin disorders, headaches, upset stomach, and depression, says Paul Rosch, MD, president of the American Institute of Stress in Yonkers, NY. One recent study even linked childhood stress to overeating fat-laden foods. If your child seems extra anxious, chances are you are as well. “Children often copy the tendency to get stressed-out from their parents,” says Rosch. Set a calmer tone with these fun, at-home serenity strategies you and your kids can do together. Just breathe. Recent studies show that transcendental meditation (TM) lifts kids’ moods, decreases blood pressure, and may even overcome attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. TM involves twice-daily 20-minute meditation sessions, during which you repeat a single, calming word—your mantra. More from Prevention: Meditation To Match Your Personality Another option for kids and families: mindfulness-based stress reduction, which lowers anxiety by teaching you to be aware of your body and mind in a nonjudgmental way at all times. For a quick tension reliever, stop whatever you’re doing, sit down, and simply concentrate on your breathing. Pop in a yoga video. Spend half an hour doing Shake Like Jelly, Down Diggety Doggy Down, and other yoga poses adapted for children by Marsha Wenig, founder of YogaKids International. To help kids further relieve stress during yoga, Wenig suggests making noise—the louder and sillier, the better. Try erupting-volcano sounds, a lion’s roar, and a snake’s hiss. Read a bedtime story. It used to take two hours for certified children’s meditation facilitator Lori Lite, from Marietta, GA, to get her hyperactive son to sleep—until she invented bedtime stories that incorporated deep breathing, muscle relaxation, affirmations, and visualization. Her impromptu stories led her to publish four books, including A Boy and a Bear: The Children’s Relaxation Book. Read it, and relax. Spend time outdoors.“Nature has a relaxing effect that refreshes the mind and the ability to focus,” says Frances Kuo, PhD. She can prove it. In a University of Illinois study, she had parents of 452 5- to 18-year-olds with ADHD rate their children’s ability to concentrate after the kids spent time in various indoor and outdoor settings. After a spell in the green grass, the kids’ focus improved significantly.[pagebreak] Hold the sugar. Imagine pouring a 5-pound bag of sugar down your child’s throat. Absurd, right? Wrong. New data shows that this is the amount kids get every month, and most of it doesn’t come from the sugar bowl or cookie jar. “Liquid sugar from soda, juice, and fruit drinks is the biggest source,” says Barry M. Popkin, PhD, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. His study of more than 73,000 children and adults found that between ages 2 and 18, kids drink 135% more calories in sweetened beverages than you probably did as a child. Too much of any sweetener can raise a child’s risk of obesity, poor bone density, and type 2 diabetes by adding calories and crowding out healthier dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. Sweetener overload also contributes to tooth decay. “Humans have a primitive desire for sugar that is made stronger by a sweets-heavy diet,” says Popkin. Combine preference for sweet tastes with fun-filled ads that push candy, sugar-filled cereals, fruit drinks, and sodas, and you have the oldest advertising trick in the book: Get ’em hooked early, and they’re yours for life. The World Health Organization recommends a daily upper limit for kids of 40 grams, or 10 teaspoons, of any type of sugar. Use these tips for cutting back on sweets. More from Prevention: How You Gain Weight Without Eating Ease cravings. If your child typically has dessert every day, switch to a dish of strawberries or other fruit with a tablespoon or two of whipped cream. Then gradually start trimming the cream. Don’t rely on artificially sweetened products; they may have fewer calories, but their intense taste reinforces the desire for sweets. Have a sweet-Saturday rule. Make dessert a once-a-week special treat, preferably eaten outside the home, so your kitchen can be a sugar-free zone. Kids have plenty of opportunities to get the sweet stuff at birthday parties, scouting events, and sports functions. Soda, sugary cereals, and sweetened fruit drinks and yogurts should also be considered treats. Make sparkly juice. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting 100% fruit juice to 4 to 6 oz a day for 1- to 6-year-olds, and to 7 to 12 oz a day for those ages 7 to 18. Wean your child off sweetened drinks by mixing sparkling water with grape or apple juice. That way, your child can have two of these drinks a day without surpassing the juice limit. Limit TV. Reduce exposure to ads for sweetened foods and drinks by restricting TV to 2 hours a day and sticking to commercial-free stations or by playing videos or DVDs instead. Educate yourself. To reduce sugar in your child’s diet, don’t buy foods that list the following forms of sugar as one of the first few ingredients on the ingredients list:
DextroseEvaporated cane juiceFructoseFruit juice concentrateGlucoseHigh fructose corn syrupHoneyLactoseMaple syrupMolassesSucrose
