Keep Children Healthy

As a parent, you want your child to be as healthy and happy as possible – and there’s plenty you can do to help them.

Keeping your child active and teaching them about healthy eating can have a lifelong impact and reduce their risk of coronary heart di sease.

Why should my child do physical activity?

Physical activity is good for your child’s mind, body and soul. While you may have to drag them away from their latest computer game, allowing them to live a sedentary lifestyle could have long-term implications on their health. Physical activity:

• helps your child build a healthy heart and develop strong muscles and bones
• helps to reduce the risk of some chronic diseases in later life
• reduces body fat and helps them feel good about themselves
• improves their social and moral development and reduces anxiety and stress
• increases their opportunity to mix with other children and make friends.

How long should my child do physical activity?

Children and young people should aim to participate in physical activity for 60 minutes every day. They need to do a moderate intensity activity, like walking, dancing, games, swimming, cycling, active play and most sports. It’s also recommended that they take part in activities which enhance and maintain muscular strength, flexibility and bone health at least twice a week, such as climbing, skipping, jumping or gymnastics.

They don’t need to do the whole hour at once, and it can be split over the day. They could do four 15-minute blocks, or three of 20 minutes – as long as they get their full hour of physical activity, it doesn’t matter when they do it.

You can incorporate this into their daily life easily – walk with them to and from school, encourage them to participate in PE lessons, enjoy active play with friends at break times and arrange for them to play sport or take part in structured exercise out of school.

Why should I worry about what my child is eating?

By encouraging your child to eat a healthy, balanced diet, you’re teaching them good habits for life. Eating too much salt, saturated fat and having an unhealthy eating habits can lead to coronary heart disease. Eating healthily improves their physical health, wellbeing and their concentration at school.

How do I make healthy food interesting?

A healthy well-balanced diet should include five portions of fruit or veg every day.

Encourage them to see if they can eat a rainbow of colours each day - purple plums, blue blueberries, red tomatoes, green broccoli, yellow sweetcorn and orange carrots. Put a whiteboard in your kitchen and let them draw on a new line to their rainbow after each meal.

Suggest alternatives to sweet, sugary and fatty snacks and offer fruit and veg, rice crackers, dried fruit and yoghurts instead.