How To Encourage Healthy Habits In Kids At a Young Age

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Something I’ve been really convicted about in my own parenting recently is trying to figure out how to encourage healthy habits in kids. There’s so many life skills I want my boys to leave my home with. One major life skill that I think is overlooked is knowing how to take care of our own bodies.

I think this topic is hard to discuss. So many of us feel like we’re not quite there with the wellness journey in our own personal lives. How in the world are we going to be able to encourage healthy habits in kids at a young age?

I definitely don’t think I have all of the answers. Honestly our wellness journey is exactly that, a journey. But there are some tips I’ve learned that have made a difference. These are what I’ll share here today.

Encourage Healthy Eating Habits In Kids

The number one area that I spend the most time focusing on when it comes to healthy habits in kids has to do with their eating habits. In fact, because I spend so much effort in this one area, this whole blog post is only going to cover that topic. Stay tuned for a Part Two!

I want my sons to grow up having a healthy view of food. Additionally, I want them to be able to control food cravings but still be able to enjoy foods. I don’t want them to feel guilty when they eat something that’s “not good for them”. It’s a fine line to navigate!

Invest In Some Water Bottles

One of the first habits I learned to teach my boys has to do with drinking water. When they were 3 and 2, I remember several times wondering if they were getting enough water to drink. It wasn’t until I started my job as a teacher that I learned an easy and effectual way of being sure they had as much water as they wanted every day: buy a water bottle.

It seems like a silly and duh solution, but it wasn’t for me. On the night of open house, my son’s preschool teacher asked me to send them to school with water bottles. She said typically they have juice to drink during snack time, but it’s good for them to have water bottles on hand throughout the day.

At the moment, I was annoyed because it was one more thing that I needed to go buy for them. Now, I’m so thankful for that. Even now, when I stay home with them every day, I make sure they have water bottles filled up for them to drink out of every morning. I don’t have to worry about encouraging them to drink water anymore; they drink whenever they want to.

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Focus on Fruit and Vegetables

I know, this sounds like another duh. Honestly, all of my suggestions are pretty “duh”. It really is simple changes done consistently that are going to encourage healthy habits in kids. If it’s something that the whole family just does, why would they ever stop?

So, I focus on making sure my sons get at least one fruit or vegetable at every meal. What exactly does this look like?

A Typical Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

For breakfast, 3-4 days a week we eat smoothies. the other 2-3 days we have applesauce or yogurt with berries in it. It really is that simple.

At lunch time, I give them raw vegetables with some sort of salad dressing. My go-tos are cherry tomatoes, carrots, sliced cucumbers, or broccoli. It’s important to point out that I’m not buying all four veggies every week. Usually I buy two each week and the next week do two different ones. This gives variety to the boys so they’re not “bored” with same old, same old.

Suppertime is a bit more difficult (especially right now) because we usually have something going on. So my supper meals I try to make fast and serve quick. Either I’m steaming a bag of frozen veggies or I’ve incorporated the veggies into my meal. For instance, if I’m making a pasta casserole, I’ve typically thrown spinach into it.

Sharing My Smoothie Recipe

I want to pause by adding in my basic smoothie recipes for you to enjoy. I have two simple recipes and they’re both easy. On my weekly grocery list I make sure I have a tub of plain Greek yogurt, milk, Orange juice, honey, cinnamon, and a large bag of frozen fruit (I change up the fruit medleys to increase varieties).

Each morning I decided if I’m going to choose dairy or dairy free. Honestly, I eyeball the measurements because I’ve been making them for so long. If I had to guess, the recipe for my dairy smoothie is 1 C milk, 1 C yogurt, 1-2 C frozen fruit, 1/4 C honey and 1-2 T cinnamon. For the dairy free recipe, I do 2 C OJ, 1-2 C fruit, 1/4 C honey and 1-2 T cinnamon.

Because I make this roughly 5 times a week, I for sure suggest that you invest in a good blender. I have an instant pot blender, and it works wonders for me. Unfortunately I can’t find it on the market right now, but this one looks incredibly similar to mine.

My Last Tip For Healthy Habits in Kids:

I kind of already stated this, but want to point this out. It’s important to note that I try hard to rotate my fruits and veggies that I buy every week. I hate it when my produce goes bad (seriously, it’s not cheap!). I try at all costs to choose foods that I know my family will eat.

I’ve come up with a sort of rotation that so far is working. Week one I get bananas, berries (blueberries, strawberries and/or raspberries), and grapes. For vegetables I get cucumbers and carrots and sweet peppers. Week two is oranges, apples/applesauce, and pineapple. That week I’m also choosing cherry tomatoes and broccoli or cauliflower.

Healthy Eating Tips To Improve Family Wellness

These are a few random tips that I’ve noticed can change your whole family’s approach to wellness. The number one step I tend to encourage others to start doing is read ingredient labels.

I mention that a little bit here, so it doesn’t need to be repeated. But I will just add that reading ingredient labels allows you to inform yourself on the foods that your family is consuming. You quickly learn that some foods are quite unnecessary and that you can do without. Or, there’s a better brand inches away from the product that you typically buy.

I try to avoid food dyes, hydrogenated oils (they’re in everything, so it’s hard to completely eliminate them), added sugars, and high fructose corn syrup. It’s important to note that practicing the 80/20 rule is great for flexibility in life. What I mean by that is 80% of the time, we follow these guidelines strictly. The other 20% of the time, when we’re out and about or experiencing life, it’s okay to let them slip.

Make More From Scratch

If you start to pay attention to ingredient labels at all, you slowly realize that there are some food items you should just simply make yourself. You could spend ten minutes in an aisle looking for something that isn’t cooked with hydrogenated oils. Or, you can just resign to the fact that if you truly want healthy foods, you’re going to have to make them yourself.

The good news is some foods really don’t take that much effort to throw together on your own. The even better news is that usually it tastes better. For instance, after trying to find “clean” Italian sausage at the grocery store, I found out that you could make your own with a pound of ground beef, simply by adding certain spices. Well duh, of course I’m going to do that.

It’s just as easy to make your own cream of _____ soups (chicken, mushroom, etc). And, when it comes to different seasonings, think taco seasonings or ranch packets (that usually have their own fillers added to them), utilizing a spice cabinet turns your food into something ten times more flavorful.

Become Friends With a Farmer

Most of my healthy eating tips save me money on top of knowing that the food we eat is healthy. It’s truly all the more reason to start down the nontoxic lifestyle. Unfortunately, once you connect with a farmer, that’s where saving money stops.

It’s no secret that finding a local farmer to source your meats, dairy and eggs is going to cost you more. However, the food quality in my opinion is 1,000 times worth it. If you’re wondering why you should look into buying beef from a farmer, you definitely want to read this post about my experiences. If you’re wanting to hear about buying raw milk and how ridiculously easy it is to make butter from that milk, read this one.

Be Careful How You Utilize Snacks

Something I’ve noticed myself and other well meaning moms doing really frequently without even realizing it is we connect snacks to emotions. Two instances I’ve noticed just in the past month show me that it’s something that most modern day American moms consider normal and don’t even realize that we’re doing it.

Scenario Number One: A toddler stubs his toe on a door frame. He’s with Grandma, who gives him a hug and a kiss, slaps a Band-Aid on his toe to take the pain away, and gives him a bag of chips to distract him. Her plan is flawless: within seconds, he’s forgotten all about his pain and by the time the chips are consumed, he’s his happy, cheery self once again.

Food Becomes Attached to Making Yourself Feel Better

If we really stop to think about the above situation, we would be able to focus on what we’re actually teaching our children. It’s something that most adult women struggle with on a regular basis. When we’re not feeling good, when we’re hurt, when we find ourselves experiencing any type of pain (physical or emotional), food makes us feel better.

This is why we consume ice cream out of the quart container after a breakup. This is why we think the only way to have a good time with our friends is dining together, either at a restaurant or in each other’s homes.

Sure, it’s not wrong to indulge in good tasting food from time to time with friends, or by ourselves. But it’s also a good idea to break the mentality behind emotional attachments to foods. If you can somehow break that cycle and teach better eating habits surrounding your emotions to your own child, you’ve hit the jackpot.

Scenario Number Two

Another scenario I’ve noticed being repeated–and one I’ve found myself using a lot–is using snacks to entertain your toddler. We do this in the moments where you need your child to sit still/be quiet and it works really effectively.

When I’m at the T-ball game watching my older two boys play, my youngest always wants to go to the park. Unfortunately, he’s way too young to go by himself still, and I don’t want to miss the game. So, it’s very easy for me to pack extra snacks, have him sit in the stands next to me and enjoy himself while I can watch the boys play.

Occasionally, when I’m in a bind, I do resort to snacks to entertain. Looking at the bigger picture, though, I know this mentality isn’t helping in the long run. Why, when we’re bored, do we feel the need to snack? Probably because our mothers, like us, used this same method to keep us still. The key is to find better methods than snacks.

Fix Your Approach to Sickness

I could use an entire blog post to state how you should upgrade your medicine cabinet to help improve your child’s wellness. Oh wait, I already did. Honestly, there’s not a huge need to restate all that’s been stated, other than to just point out that part of encouraging healthy habits in kids is changing your approach to sickness.

Over the counter medications with food dye, sugar additives, and artificial flavors and ingredients shouldn’t be our first line of defense for treating infections. I’m not even completely talking about shifting our medicine from mainstream to herbal remedies and holistic solutions.

In fact, we should be applying a more proactive approach in our own bodies as well as our children’s. If we shift our focus to improving our gut health with high fibrous diets, low sugar, probiotics and plenty of water, before we even get sick, we’ve won half the battle.

Call To Action To Encourage Healthy Habits in Kids

There’s so many tips and suggestions online for ways to improve our health and wellness. The problem is that most of us don’t focus on our wellness journey until we’re much older in life. How much better would it be if we encouraged healthy habits in our children at a young age, today, so that they’re that much more prepared!