The True Value of Healthy Habits We’re Teaching Our Kids

The True Value of Healthy Habits We’re Teaching Our Kids

Raising your kids and teaching them to grow up into responsible and hardworking young people is surely not an easy task, but it has to be done no matter what. You will have to deal with numerous challenges in order to get this done, but trust us – it’ll be worth all the effort. If you are wondering how to do that successfully, stay with us. Here are six healthy habits you need to teach your children.

  1. Emotional Health Comes First

    Emotional health is pretty much underrated these days, when there are medicines and magic pills for every problem we might encounter. Still, it is crucial that your little ones understand its importance. Emotional stability can be seen as a useful trait nowadays, since we lead hectic lives and burn out quickly. Teach your kids to maintain deep relationships with people, especially with you, their siblings, friends, and the rest of the family. This will help them establish other kinds of relationships later in life.

  2. Everything is About Balance

    As an adult, you know that it’s extremely hard to find balance in life. Sometimes it even seems unattainable, since we are often stuck in the grip of our jobs and other grown-up responsibilities. However, you should do your best when teaching your children that having balance is essential. Show them how to manage their tasks from an early age, teach them that fun always comes after hard work, and that they can have it all. Work hard – play hard, right?

  3. Hard Work Always Pays off

    Teaching kids to have a good work ethic will help them manage their responsibilities properly, when it comes to both their school work and job. Even though you may want to make everything as easy as possible for them, that will do them more harm than good when they grow up. Instead, teach them that hard work always pays off and you will see them growing up into responsible, diligent young people who really mean business.

  4. Appreciate Nature

    In the era of immense technological innovations and the rapid development of the Internet, it can be very hard to get your kids outdoor and teach them to love nature. The majority of them would rather stay home playing video games or watching TV for hours, which can be bad for both their physical and mental health. Prove them that they can have fun outside of their comfort zone, and your kids will be grateful for teaching them how to connect with nature in the best way possible.

  5. Managing Moods Is the Key to Success

    A skill of mood management is another true gem your kids need to develop. In case you didn’t know, we have the ability to consciously change our moods, meaning that we are actually in charge of our own emotions. Experts advise that parents should teach their kids to identify, monitor and shift their own moods, so that they can correct negative thoughts all by themselves. That will surely lead to a positive attitude and self-image which are more than rewarding.

  6. Cultivate Fun and Optimism

    Having fun and laughing out loud is certainly the best cure for everything, so make sure that your kids are aware of that. The more we get together and laugh together, the happier we’ll be! Happiness and optimism are real game-changers that can improve not only your mood, but also your life in general. So teach your kids that valuable lesson and watch them grow up happy. It doesn’t get better than that!

Raising kids is definitely a difficult task that requires a lot of work, patience and effort. However, you’ll see that it will pay off. Seeing your kids happy and successful is what counts, so make sure that you have done everything you possibly could in order to achieve that. Help your kids overcome all the obstacles instead of overcoming them by yourself, and you will give them the most valuable thing – the knowledge about the world.


About the Author: Sophia Smith

Sophia is Australian based beauty, lifestyle and health blogger. She is very passionate about organic beauty products, healthy lifestyle and personal development. She is regular contributor at High Style Life.

Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +

2 Comments

Meg Ferrante

Would love to see a post about number 5 alone. Mood management is truly important but to me, the hardest one on the list. My 10-year-old LOVES to run away when he is angry or wronged. I picture a lifetime of him running away from his problems and it scares me. I want to help him and I do try (pull him back in the room, get down on his level, take my voice to a whisper, etc) What else can we do to help him? For 88 percent of the day, he is as happy as a lark but when the worm turns, LOOK OUT!

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We can’t fix a problem (felt disconnection) by replicating the problem (removing affection, time-out, ignoring them).

All young people at some point will feel the distance between them and their loved adult. This isn’t bad parenting. It’s life. Life gets in the way sometimes - work stress, busy-ness, other kiddos.

We can’t be everything to everybody all the time, and we don’t need to be.

Kids don’t always need our full attention. Mostly, they’ll be able to hold the idea of us and feel our connection across time and space.

Sometimes though, their tanks will feel a little empty. They’ll feel the ‘missing’ of us. This will happen in all our relationships from time to time.

Like any of us humans, our kids and teens won’t always move to restore that felt connection to us in polished or lovely ways. They won’t always have the skills or resources to do this. (Same for us as adults - we’ve all been there.)

Instead, in a desperate, urgent attempt to restore balance to the attachment system, the brain will often slide into survival mode. 

This allows the brain to act urgently (‘See me! Be with me!) but not always rationally (‘I’m missing you. I’m feeling unseen, unnoticed, unchosen. I know this doesn’t make sense because you’re right there, and I know you love me, but it’s just how I feel. Can you help me?’

If we don’t notice them enough when they’re unnoticeable, they’ll make themselves noticeable. For children, to be truly unseen is unsafe. But being seen and feeling seen are different. Just because you see them, doesn’t mean they’ll feel it.

The brain’s survival mode allows your young person to be seen, but not necessarily in a way that makes it easy for us to give them what they need.

The fix?

- First, recognise that behaviour isn’t about a bad child. It’s a child who is feeling disconnected. One of their most important safety systems - the attachment system - is struggling. Their behaviour is an unskilled, under-resourced attempt to restore it.

- Embrace them, lean in to them - reject the behaviour.

- Keep their system fuelled with micro-connections - notice them when they’re unnoticeable, play, touch, express joy when you’re with them, share laughter.♥️
Everything comes back to how safe we feel - everything: how we feel and behave, whether we can connect, learn, play - or not. It all comes back to felt safety.

The foundation of felt safety for kids and teens is connection with their important adults.

Actually, connection with our important people is the foundation of felt safety for all of us.

All kids will struggle with feeling a little disconnected at times. All of us adults do too. Why? Because our world gets busy sometimes, and ‘busy’ and ‘connected’ are often incompatible.

In trying to provide the very best we can for them, sometimes ‘busy’ takes over. This will happen in even the most loving families.

This is when you might see kiddos withdraw a little, or get bigger with their behaviour, maybe more defiant, bigger feelings. This is a really normal (though maybe very messy!) attempt to restore felt safety through connection.

We all do this in our relationships. We’re more likely to have little scrappy arguments with our partners, friends, loved adults when we’re feeling disconnected from them.

This isn’t about wilful attempt, but an instinctive, primal attempt to restore felt safety through visibility. Because for any human, (any mammal really), to feel unseen is to feel unsafe.

Here’s the fix. Notice them when they are unnoticeable. If you don’t have time for longer check-ins or conversations or play, that’s okay - dose them up with lots of micro-moments of connection.

Micro-moments matter. Repetition matters - of loving incidental comments, touch, laughter. It all matters. They might not act like it does in the moment - but it does. It really does.

And when you can, something else to add in is putting word to the things you do for them that might go unnoticed - but doing this in a joyful way - not in a ‘look at what I do for you’ way.

‘Guess what I’m making for dinner tonight because I know how much you love it … pizza!’

‘I missed you today. Here you go - I brought these car snacks for you. I know how much you love these.’

‘I feel like I haven’t had enough time with you today. I can’t wait to sit down and have dinner with you.’ ❤️

#parenting #gentleparenting #parent #parentingwithrespect
It is this way for all of us, and none of this is about perfection. 

Sometimes there will be disconnect, collisions, discomfort. Sometimes we won’t be completely emotionally available. 

What’s important is that they feel they can connect with us enough. 

If we can’t move to the connection they want in the moment, name the missing or the disconnect to help them feel less alone in it:

- ‘I missed you today.’ 
- ‘This is a busy week isn’t it. I wish I could have more time with you. Let’s go to the park or watch a movie together on Sunday.’
- ‘I know you’re annoyed with me right now. I’m right here when you’re ready to talk. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.’
- ‘I can see you need space. I’ll check in on you in a few minutes.’

Remember that micro-connections matter - the incidental chats, noticing them when they are unnoticeable, the smiles, the hugs, the shared moments of joy. They all matter, not just for your little people but for your big ones too.♥️

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