As a parent or guardian, you want your children to be the healthiest they can be. Helping your children be physically active and eat nutritious food are foremost in your mind.
If your child is often eating ultra-processed foods such as doughnuts and pop and refusing to eat their vegetables, you may be concerned about their health.
Physical activity also contributes to health and well-being. Children and youth need to be physically active 60 to 90 minutes a day, most days of the week, to stay healthy.
What you can do
Healthy habits, including regular physical activity and healthy eating, begin at home at a young age and continue throughout life. Between the ages of 6 and 12, children learn to make decisions and begin to make more choices of their own. They are developing eating habits and attitudes they may carry with them for the rest of their lives. Peer pressure influences children and youth of all ages and is particularly strong in the early teen years.
In the meantime, you, as a parent or guardian, play an important role in helping your children stay healthy.
- Encourage your children to eat three well-balanced meals a day at regular times. Fill half their plate with vegetables and fruit, a quarter of their plate with whole grains and a quarter with protein foods.
- Offer them water, sometimes milk instead of pop and other sugary drinks.
- Serve fresh fruit, veggie sticks and yogurt after school and on the weekends.
- Encourage free outdoor play (A pick-up game of baseball? Tobogganing?) while limiting their screen time in front of computers, video games and TV.
- Help children get pleasure out of being active by encouraging them to choose activities they love – is it dancing, basketball, hockey, soccer, swimming, rollerblading, biking, or jumping rope?
- Read about children's physical activity needs.
- Schedule family outings that are active such as hiking a provincial park trail or swimming at the local community centre pool.
- Get your kids cooking – they usually like to eat what they have fun making.
- Eat together as a family as often as possible
- Set a good example yourself by eating healthfully and being physically active on a regular basis.
Related information
Read the Heart and Stroke Foundation position statements on:
Restricting Food and Beverage Marketing to Kids