Let’s explore how positive lifestyle choices can affect a child’s education. As our children grow older, we give them more choices about certain things in their lives. Giving children choices is important as it teaches them how to make a decision, and how to learn from mistakes as well. However, when it comes to making healthy lifestyle choices, we need to be clever and yet firm about what their choices might be.
Disclaimer: This is a collaborative post.
Here are 4 Positive lifestyle choices that can affect a child’s education.
Parents are in a unique position of influence over their children and modelling a healthy lifestyle can help them to make the right decisions. With a lot of factors, parents have to take into account, one key factor that parents will be keen to remember is keeping their children on track in school. As it’s the one key area where your child will be growing the most, a lot of this can be impacted by what lifestyle choices your child makes.
With some input from this pre prep school in Surrey, we take a look at how certain lifestyle choices can affect your child and their approach to education.
Exercise Regularly
Children, like adults, need to exercise regularly. By incorporating exercise into their lifestyle from an early age, children are more likely to want to exercise as adults too. Exercise is a fundamental part of those positive lifestyle choices that can affect a child’s education on numerous levels.
It is important for children to exercise as it has lots of health benefits such as:
- increased fitness level
- improves concentration
- encourages healthy development
- it can improve their self-esteem
- it improves their posture and balance
- exercise is proven to lower stress levels and anxiety in children
- it encourages a good night’s sleep.
Besides the health benefits of exercise for children, a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise can also improve children’s mental health, and teach them social skills.
Sleep Patterns
Getting your 8 hours a day is critical for all of us to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and it’s the same for children. You might find your child needs more than the recommended 8 hours of sleep and you should plan accordingly, especially if they’re quite cranky when their 7 am alarm goes off.
Sleep issues can lead to poor behaviour, increased stress and less motivation during school time. If nipped in the bud early on, and by maintaining a strict routine, your child will remain more focused during school time. Creating a good bedtime routine for your child is part of a healthy lifestyle choice that can directly affect your child’s education. It’s also not simply the number of hours of sleep a child gets, but the quality of sleep that is important too.
An alternative to reading at bedtime could be meditation or other mindfulness activities for children, which have many other benefits too.
Digital Device Usage
The world is changing constantly, and so is our relationship with technology. The more we cling to these things the more we tend to become addicted to social media, apps and games on our smartphones or tablets. Whilst I believe there is a time and a place for devices, and yes, they are very much a part of our children’s lives as well as our own, restricting the amount of time and when our children are using digital devices is important for their overall healthy lifestyle.
The blue light from our smartphones, tablets and laptops is also a growing concern for children that can have repeated headaches when using these devices. It is recommended to take away any devices at least an hour before they head to sleep so that they get a good night’s sleep. Instead of going straight from watching TV or any device screen, try encouraging your children to read a book before bed. Reading before bed is a great way to get children to relax and ready their body for sleep, as well as being good for their overall education.
A Balanced And Healthy Diet
Healthy cooking and eating is one key way to ensure that your child gets enough nutrients in their diet regularly. Eating junk food or foods high in sugar can cause your child to be irritable, can cause weight gain, as well as the inevitable sugar crash children often get. It’s this aspect of giving them the right information about food that can promote positive lifestyle choices that can affect a child’s education.
Swap out sugary snacks for fruit in their lunchboxes, and follow the rule of having at least 5 portions of fruit and veg in your child’s food each day. Teaching children how to make healthy lifestyle choices when it comes to their food, and giving them healthy food options is essential from a young age. As with everything, there is a time and a place for indulgences, but teaching them how to get the balance right is crucial.
I hope you found this post to be informative. Sometimes these things seem obvious to us, but when you look at it written down and you really consider how well you’re stacking up on a basic healthy lifestyle review, it can help to make those changes that will be beneficial to your children. These 4 positive lifestyle choices that can affect a child’s education are ones that we as parents can have a direct and positive influence over. So what change will you make today? Let me know in the comments below.
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