We often hear the words - "Children are the future of
world.”
Forget world, for all of us, children are our own future.
The moment we become parents or a child arrives in our house, we start viewing
the world through their eyes. We live our dreams with our kids. The little soul
becomes our reflection. Needless to say, our world revolves around them.
Thus, the home is exact mirror image of children.
Children are sleeping; whole house goes quite as if
sleeping.
Children are playing; whole house is playing with them.
Children are happy, the house is laughing out loud.
Children are sad, the house cries with them.
Children are ill, everyone else is ill too.
I have a three years old baby boy and believe me, all family
members feel sick whenever he is not well. If not sick, at least, all of us have to quite
our respective chores and be extra attentive towards him so as to make sure he
is eating well, playing just enough and taking medicines on time. My heart
literally cries whenever I have to force feed a bitter medicine to him.
Thus it is very important to enforce healthy habits at our
home. Doctors say that if we eat on time and sleep on time, we would be healthy
as ever. But apart from this, I think there are some basic habits which we can
induce in our lives so as to remain healthy:
1. Wash hands before and after the meals
Ever seen the 'T
asty Time with Ze Fronk' cartoon series on
Disney Junior? It very proudly says - "We wash our hands to make them
neat, before we fix our tasty treat".
I bet if the kids watch this series, they won't let you cook
or plate the food without washing your hands forget eating.
2. Drink plenty of water
Seventy percent of our body is made up of water. While drinking
water is good, we also need to make sure that the water is purified or boiled
before drinking.
This is one habit which can be really easy or really hard to
induce in kids. Some kids keep drinking water and some just won't do it. My kid
is of second type. It's very rare that he drinks water properly. We need to
keep asking him if he need water and when he wants, he drink only a sip. Ironically,
He drink more than required and sometimes vomits back whenever we are eating
out.
3. Workout outdoors
Many of us want to shed those kilos. Some of us workout as
well. But, we generally work out in gyms or closed areas. Similarly, kids these
days have forgotten the fun games we have grown up playing. Remember hide and
seek in parks, pakdam pakdai, vish-amrit, uunch neech ka papda, chain-chain and
many more. How many kids these days know about them? Playing for today's kids
implies those video games, x-box or some stupid addictive games on our
smartphones. We need to make sure that we put in that extra effort to let the
kids run and soak in some fresh air outdoors. This has an added advantage -
play along with them and stay slim.
4. Early to bed, early to rise
This is one nursery rhyme hate so much. At the same time, I
do wish to go to bed early. Believe me, seven to eight hours of sound sleep is
more than enough for us. If we sleep early, we tend to wake up early
automatically.
My kid does not sleep at night till everyone in in bed. The time
till anyone is awake, he keep jumping around that person. We need to try and
sleep early and thus rise early. This also gives us more time to ourselves. My
mother in law also says - "Jo sota hai, vo khota hai!". According to
her, people who sleep till late in morning have already wasted half of their
day thus leaving less time to do work, enjoy etc.
5. Healthy Eating
Some wise man said - "Breakfast like a king, lunch like
a labour and dinner like a beggar". This is so true as we all get the same
advice by all health experts.
Healthy eating also includes a balanced diet. While those
juices tastes good and are easy to consume, but they have no nutrition value
when compared to fresh fruits. Take the orange juice for instance. One glass of
orange juice has almost 4 to five oranges minus any fibres and starch which is
so important to us specially the kids.
If we eat healthy, we increase our immunity also.
Healthy people are
those who live in healthy homes on a healthy diet; in an environment equally
fit for birth, growth work, healing, and dying... Healthy people need no
bureaucratic interference to mate, give birth, share the human condition and
die.
~Ivan Illich
