Child health is always number one. That is generally the case in every parent’s mind. The problem is, keeping your little one healthy is not as easy as turning the palm of the hand.
Child’s health is also influenced by many factors, in addition to habits at home, there are also environment, healthy food for kids and weather factors.
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Parents need to think about kids health that must be taught, so that the kids are accustomed to living a healthy life. The following, tips that you can try to help maintain child’s health, so that the kids are not easily to get ill and can develop optimally.
Taking care of children’s health is mandatory. Compared with adults, children are more susceptible to disease. Therefore, the immune system at that age has not been formed perfectly.
Not surprisingly, there are many children who are easily infected with the flu to smallpox, there are cases where children even must be brought to healthy kids pediatrics or child clinic.
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Even if you can’t protect your kids 24 hours a day, the following steps about kids health which can help reduce your child’s risk of illness, so that your child’s health is maintained and improved.
1. Serve a healthy food for kids
Providing healthy food for kids is an important step to maintaining a child health. So, instead of giving them foods that are full of fat, sugar in high calories such as fast food, better to serve healthy food such as vegetables or fruit for snack at home.
That way will make the child will get used to eat healthy foods that are fresh and nutritious. Make sure in one plate there are a variety of healthy food for kids such as vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, and nuts which is very beneficial to maintain your child health. Eating healthy food also one of good thing of children’s behavioral health.
2. Set the child’s food portions
Talk about child’s food, you have to be careful. Make sure that the child eats enough, not too little, but also not too much.
Healthy food for kids is important, but don’t forget to give it in right portions. If they eat too little, then the child can become malnourished and nutrients, making it easy getting sick. Meanwhile, if they overeating, it will be a risk factor to have obesity and diabetes which is certainly not good for child health.
3. Make your child wash their hands habitually
Getting your child to wash his hands diligently in the right way is one of the simplest steps to maintain a child health by improving children’s behavioral health. Make sure to teach your child to wash their hands after blowing their nose, using the toilet, after playing outside the house and always before and after eating.
In that way, you have helped reduce the risk of a child getting sick and prevent them from spreading the disease to others, including their friends at school.
4. Teach healthy habits to your child
Teach your child not to rub their eyes constantly with their hands, because germs from the hands can enter the eyes. Also do not share a glass or toothbrush with others because it can transfer germs.
Moreover, teach your child to close their mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing, also not to get too close to people who are coughing or sneezing. Because, germs can move and causing them to get sick. That is one of simple habit which is important to maintain children’s behavioral health.
5. Encourage children to actively move
Your child maybe can spend hours for playing games or watching cartoons on television. Of course many children love it. These habits can make children lazy to move and become the risk factors of various diseases. Parents should know better that physical activity is very important for child health.
Physical activity is one of children’s behavioral health which must be taught to maintain and improve child health. Help your child to be active, at least for one hour every day, in total.
Encourage them to do activities that can increase heart rate and breathing, as well as train the strength of muscles and bones. Cycling, playing badminton, basketball etc can be so fun for them. Of course, always make sure the safety of these activities.
6. Improve the child’s immune system
The disease can be avoided as long as the child has a good immune system. Increase your child immunity means improve your child health. Make sure to serve healthy food for kids, gets enough sleep, and slowly get them used to exercise regularly.
Ensuring mental health is also important to improve the child’s immune system. So, do the steps below so that children are not overly stress in living their life both at school and at home. Make sure they has enough time to play and joke with people closest to them.
7. Do the immunizations and routine check-ups for child
Make your child adapted with routine check-up in children’s health services such as dental and eye examinations. It will help early detection if the child is affected by certain diseases. This step is very important as an effective way to prevent the disease.
Speaking of child health, immunization or vaccines is also very important in order to get your child protected from various viruses and harmful bacteria.
Also read: PCV Vaccine for Children: Prevent Pneumonia to Meningitis
Make sure to bring your child to the children’s health services to get the basic immunization recommended by the Indonesian Pediatrician Association (IDAI).
8. Teach children to maintain dental’s health
About kids health, tooth decay is the most common problem that occurs in children. If left unchecked, tooth decay can affect permanent tooth growth, and cause problems with the way your child speak.
Therefore, teach your child to maintain healthy teeth by regularly brushing their teeth at least twice a day, after eating and before going to bed. Remember to bring your child every 6 months to child clinic for a dental examination.
Never scare your child about dentist, make them get friendly with dentist so that isn’t scare for them.
9. Avoid excessive use of soap and antibacterial products
Washing hands is one of recommended habit of children’s behavioral health. Washing with antibacterial soap is good for maintaining a child health. However, everything that is excessive is still not good. If used excessively, the soap will not only destroy the bacteria that causes disease, but also the good bacteria needed by the body.
10. Create a safe environment for children
Maintaining the child health, not only about healthy body, but also makes the surrounding environment a safe place for them to grow. For example, use a car seat specifically for children when driving with your children.
In addition, you also need to keep dangerous objects such as knives, scissors, and the other sharp objects, also drugs out of your child reach. Be aware of the signs of physical, mental, or sexual abuse that a child may experience at school or elsewhere, which he or she is referring to.
Notes from DeveHealth:
Keep in your mind that children learn by imitating their parents. So, besides teaching your child to live healthy, you also need to improve your own lifestyle so that it can be a good role model for children’s behavioral health.
Maintaining the health of children, must be done in a fun way. Don’t force your child to obey you. However, try to give understanding and reasons to children, about the importance of maintaining health. In that way, the positive activities above, can be more easily adapted to long-term habits and slowly affected to your child health.
