The best health insurance program of all would be a set of healthy habits implanted in the human brain from infancy. And the best experts to program “wellness” practices into everyone’s everyday life aren’t doctors or motivational speakers or insurance providers or even President and Mrs. Clinton.
This is a job for everyone’s parents, every day.
“The most important thing is role-modeling,” said Dr. Steve Poole, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital in Denver. “Kids do what they see. The goal is for them to establish healthy habits for the rest of their lives. You can tell them what to do now, but ultimately they will do what they have seen.”
Poole says, “It needs to be done in a less pushy way so that it becomes second nature to them, ideally before they’re 10 or 11. By the time they’re 13, they may not listen quite as readily to their parents.”
Other advice:
– Be reasonable. “Kids who can’t have birthday cake when they go to a birthday party because it has sugar in it feel ostracized and develop some resentment,” says Poole.
– Be patient. “During the teenager years they’ll experiment with everything we wish they wouldn’t. But if we’ve done our role-modeling and our homework in the first 10 or 11 years, it will pay off when they get closer to 18 or 20 – and forever,” says Poole.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents start instilling healthy habits in children as young as 6 months old. The academy’s guidelines urge doctors to chat with parents, during a baby’s six-month checkup, about discouraging the use of milk or juice as a pacifier. A learned reliance on food for emotional comfort can lead to lifelong weight and nutrition problems.
The academy guidelines call for doctors to cover these wellness habits with parents and growing children and teenagers when they come in for checkups:
– Age 2: Use of toothbrush, avoiding struggles about eating, discouraging non-nutritious snacks.
– Age 3: Balanced diet, avoidance of junk food, dental appointment.
– Age 6 and age 8: Avoiding junk food, maintaining appropriate weight, exercising regularly, brushing teeth at least once daily, bicycle safety, seat belts, getting adequate sleep and limiting TV viewing.
– Age 10: The same health practices discussed since age 6, plus skateboard and water safety, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, sex education and video game limits.
– Age 12: Add sports and hobbies, self-examination of breasts and testicles, and hitchhiking.
– Age 14: Add risk-taking and sexuality, including contraception, the right to say “no” and prevention of sexually transmitted disease.
– Age 16: Add drinking and driving.
The hitch is that real kids just aren’t passionately interested in anybody’s guidelines for healthy living.
More Top Picks Irlen Syndrome After A Concussion Or Tbi What To Know
It’s one thing for a doctor to advise parents to “discourage non-nutritious snacks,” and quite another thing for parents to confront a 2-year-old who’s determined to have a cookie, right now, and absolutely nothing else, and above all not a nice dish of applesauce.
And exasperated parents often wish medical schools required every doctor-to-be to persuade just one teenager, just once, of anything at all.
Clever parents conspire together, and bookstores and magazines are filled with their tricks for getting kids to adopt healthy habits.
“I have found that a good way to get children to enjoy vegetables is to give a 3-year-old three beans, three peas or three corn kernels, a 4-year-old four beans, peas or corn kernels, etc. The children will learn to like these by getting just a few at a time, and they can always ask for more if they finish. It worked with my children and my grandchildren. Now they all eat vegetables.”
That’s the advice Marion Fisher of Jamestown, Calif., shares in Tom McMahon’s compendium of practical parenting advice, “It Works for Us!”
Poole says the 10 most important health habits parents should try to instill in children are diet, weight control, exercise, stress management, relaxation techniques, safety, avoidance of smoking, avoidance of alcohol, avoidance of drugs, developing a great support group and learning self-care, including understanding one’s own body and knowing “how to check yourself out.”