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Children love to move. They need to move. A child who sits around all day is up to no good or is driving his parent crazy! Kids need lots of physical activity to maintain good health and a body weight that is right for them, along with plenty of healthy food options. Lack of daily physical activity encourages childhood obesity. These perspectives and guidelines may help your child become more active:

The Physical Prescription: Duration, intensity, and type of activity do matter. While any movement is better than none, experts recommendat least one hour of physical activity per day, both planned activity and free play. Walking the dog is not enough– experts want to see children sweaty, red-faced, and breathless each and every day. If you are relying on school efforts, be aware that daily recess and physical education varies from school to school and may not be a significant contributor to your child’s daily activity level.

Nurture with Nature: The number one predictor of physical activity in children is time spent outdoors. Get outside routinely as a family and encourage your child to play outside as often as possible.

Get in Gear: Let your child pick out their own active wear, shoes and sports aids. Whether an independent exerciser or part of an athletic team, children enjoy having gear that supports their activities. Who doesn’t love running to music or shooting baskets in the driveway? Having the right gear can rally excitement around being active and can promote physical movement. For the teen, gym memberships, pedometers, and exercise groups/classes can be a positive motivator, as well.

Walk your Talk: More than 40% of a child’s health is determined by behavior. That’s more than genetics, healthcare, or social influences. You areyour child’s behavior barometer—your child will do what you do. So get moving!

Breaking Down Barriers: Identify any roadblocks that may get in the way of your family’s activity level, such as busy work schedules. Find solutions, not excuses, for dealing with these road blocks and how it will fit into your unique family circumstances.

Be Tech Savvy: If your child is having a difficult time giving up video games, try compromising with ones that are more active and interactive. Hands-on video games, TV exercise programs, and interactive websites can be the beginning of increased activity for your child.

Physical activity is a necessary part of being healthy and having a healthy future. And often, one avenue of activity is not the magic pill—it is a conglomeration of several efforts, each and every day. How does your child stay physically active?

Who puts food on your preschooler’s plate?

According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, it should be the children themselves. Serving meals “family-style,” in which each diner dishes what he wants onto his own plate, is considered best-practice in child care centers. If classrooms of 10 to 16 children can do it, certainly so can you.

There are lots of advantages. Children learn motor skills involved in scooping and pouring and in using serving spoons, tongs, and pitchers. They learn to estimate their own hunger and control how much to serve themselves. Children are more likely to eat what they’ve actually chosen but they are less likely to overeat. Children in child care centers who eat family-style are less likely to be obese.

We don’t believe children can do it. We think they will make a mess. And, of course, they might. Kids do need to be guided in how to use serving utensils and they need help to make certain they don’t knock over a cup of milk while scooping up some macaroni. Like any other skill, we have to show our children what to do and give them plenty of opportunities for practice.

We don’t believe children will do it. We worry that they will serve themselves too little or nothing at all. Keep in mind that children will not starve themselves. Given a chance to choose from the good food you put on the table, they will pick what they are likely to eat. They are actually likely to eat more and waste less than if grownups fill their plates for them.

We think it takes too much time. Well, what’s the hurry? Mealtime should take whatever time it needs. With practice, children will become more adept, even as adept as you.

Parents spend a lot of energy worrying what their children eat and how much. It’s time to let children take charge. Free yourself from insisting your child clean her plate – a plate you dished up – and invite her to sit with you and eat what looks delicious.

If nutritionists don’t worry, why should you?

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

About 1 in 10 people are left-handed. But scissors, ATM machines, even ball point pens were all made with the other 90% of the population in mind. Left-handed play is disallowed in the sport of polo and also in field hockey, where it’s illegal to use a left-handed stick.

Left-handed people are definitely disadvantaged by their uniqueness. What would you do if your child seemed to be left-handed?

Preference for one hand over another for writing, eating and other skilled tasks emerges at about age 3 and becomes more firmly established by age 6 or 7. For some parents, the nuisance value of being left-handed is enough to worry them when their preschooler prefers to draw with her left hand. Other parents worry that being left-handed is an indicator of more serious trouble.

Researchers have tried to link mental illness to handedness but the results are so contradictory – with one study saying left-handers have more mental problems offset by another study saying they don’t – that no reliable conclusion can be drawn. Even if there is an effect, it appears to be very small.

Other research has attempted to link being left-handed with shorter lifespans, ADHD, dyslexia and a host of other difficulties, none of which connection is strong enough to lose sleep over. As one might expect, left-handers are just as smart as right-handers, scoring the same on IQ tests. They may be more likely to be creative – as you would be too if you had to figure out your own way to write and cut paper.

Most of the differences that have been ascribed to left-handed people down through the ages are simply the result of discrimination. As handedness researcher Clare Porac has said, “One of the issues … is the following notion: Everyone should be right-handed, and if not, there’s something wrong with the brain.” Other minorities have experienced similar treatment that sends the message, “you would be a better person if you were just like us.”

And that’s a message your own little child doesn’t need to hear.

Your child is perfect just the way he is. If he’s left-handed, then it’s the world’s fault that it’s set up to favor righties, not his. Don’t try to change his hand preference. Instead, make his life easier.

Stand up for your child if her teacher insists she write right-handedly. Show your child how to orient her paper and hold her pencil so writing is easier (it will still be hard, since her writing hand must push ahead to go left-to-right, not pull the pencil). If she insists on writing from over the top of her paper, let her.

Seek out left-handed scissors, left-handed can openers, left-handed everything. There are whole catalogs of left-handed stuff. Keep in mind, though, your child will have to cope with many things that aren’t adapted. He’ll figure it out.

If your child prefers his left hand for some things and his right hand for other things, that’s okay. Don’t pressure him to figure it out. He doesn’t have to fit into one box or the other.

Many admirable people are or were left-handed, including eight of the country’s 44 Presidents (a ratio of nearly 1 in 5, much higher than lefties in the general population). The list of left-handed artists, actors, political leaders, and innovators runs very long – about a tenth of the population, in fact!

Is your child going to be left-handed? That would be lovely.

A preschool teacher in New Zealand asks a question that’s worth stopping to think about. Can your child do the sorts of things you could do when you were her age? He thinks the answer is “no.” He’s noticed that children these days are able to do less.

So think back to your own childhood. When you were six or seven, what did you like to do? Did you

Climb trees
Swing without being pushed
Know how to swim
Clamber over rocks and hills
Splash in puddles
Jump rope by yourself
Jump a rope swung by two friends
Play backyard hockey, kickball, or softball
Play hide-and-seek
Play games of tag
Shoot baskets
Throw a Frisbee
Ride a bike, ride a scooter, or roller skate

Now answer this: how many of these activities do your children do easily and often? As easily and often as you did at their age?

Kids these days don’t have as much outdoor time that’s unscheduled. They spend less time just playing with other children, and spend more time in organized sports or in settings carefully supervised by adults. Because children’s playtime these days involves grownups, it happens on grownups’ timetables. It’s limited. It’s scheduled. It’s not planned by the children themselves.

This means that children’s play is less casual. Nothing is “pick-up” anymore. The rules are not negotiated anymore but are refereed by adults. Things seem more competitive. Even the places where play happens is less natural and more “civilized.”

If children seem less interested in outdoor play this could be the reason why. And if children seem less physically fit, softer, and chubbier than they used to be, these could be contributing factors.

So, what can you do?

Stock play equipment kids can use. Lots of equipment like scooters and bikes can be got second hand or shared with nearby families. Certainly balls of several sizes and Frisbees should be part of every family’s front closet.
Let kids play. Don’t worry about the rules or technique. This is about having fun and being active, not making the team. If you like and are invited, do join in with the play, but play along; don’t make everyone do as you say.
Keep out. Try not to hover or supervise compulsively. Certainly keep an eye out and be ready to redirect kids if things seem headed for danger. But children will find their own level of challenge if you let them. Try to let them.
Be sensible. At the same time that you’re keeping out, don’t allow ropes on trees or climbing structures, bicycles on busy streets, and so on. Teach safety and remember that kids – especially children without a lot of experience with outdoor play – can’t see the dangers you can. Don’t hover but do guide.

You might find your kids don’t even know how to have fun outdoors anymore. You might have to show them. But if the fun has gone out of childhood in your neighborhood, now is the time to put it back.

Let your children have as much fun, be just as active, and be as agile now as you were back then.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

Are there treats in your house right now, hidden away where the kids can’t find them?

A bag of chips. A supply of Oreos. Ice cream in the very back of the freezer.

How’s that working for you? Has your treat stash become the object of a continuing scavenger hunt at your house? You hide things away. Your children figure out where they are and then gobble them all. You buy more and hide things again.

Like little Sherlock Holmeses, your children can figure you out. They’re wily and determined. No treats are safe, no matter what you do. And most of all those treats are not safe from you! Are they?

So here’s an idea, straight from Katherine Tallmadge, author of Diet Simple. Tallmadge suggests you control the environment not the treats. Create an environment in which everything edible is available for eating. Take the thrill of the chase out of the equation and hide things in plain sight, at kid-eye-level in the pantry and the fridge.

This means, of course, that your treats are both delicious and good for you. The whole reason why treats get hidden is you know they’re junk. So why are you buying junk?

Parents buy junk food because a) they believe children want it and b) they believe it’s cheap. But here’s the secret: children eat what’s easy. If what they think they want isn’t available, they’ll eat the next best thing that is. Retrain their taste buds by eliminating completely all the junk you’ve been buying and replacing it with stuff that’s tasty, fun and good for good health.

How about…

Apple slices
Bananas
Popcorn
Tortilla chips and salsa
Veggies and cheese dip
Yogurt
Frozen berries
Cheese slices
Nuts and dried cranberries or raisins
Just about anything spread with peanut butter
Just about anything dipped in chocolate

What’s holding you back? What’s going through your mind right now? Are you thinking this is too expensive? Are you thinking this is too hard?

When a package of store-bought cookies is at least three dollars and a bag of chips runs about four bucks, and when your kids and their friends can polish one or the other off in a single sitting, it’s silly to think that a bag of apples for the same price isn’t a good deal. It is. That bag of apples will last an entire week, no problem. A bag of popcorn. A pound of cheese and some plain crackers. The problem isn’t price and it isn’t the level of difficulty. What’s stuck is your brain.

For the good of your health and your kids’ health, rethink the treats. Instead of hiding treats, celebrate them.

Exercise is a bad word.

At least for many children, exercise sounds like hard work. It sound boring. It sounds like something a person has to do, not something she wants to do.

If you’re having trouble selling your children on being more active, it might be because you’re suggesting they go get some exercise. Try calling it something else.

Talk about doing specific things that are fun. Shooting baskets. Playing with the dog. Seeing how many pull-ups you can do. Tossing around a Frisbee. No one ever said getting exercise meant doing calisthenics. There’s a lot of other ways to be active for half an hour or more that make the time fly by.

In addition, avoid tying being active to a goal, like losing weight or even getting stronger. The way to make being active a regular part of your child’s life is to let it be valuable for its own sake. Because it’s fun. Because it feels good.

Many of us have made some resolutions for the new year, resolutions that might have included getting our kids more active. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that every child should engage in active play, preferably outdoors, for an hour every day. We know this is good for our families.

In addition, during the cold, dark winter months, we feel more like hibernating than being active. Cuddling in a blanket with a good book or the television seems more attractive than walking around the neighborhood. But everyone eats better, sleeps better, and is more alert and even smarter when they’ve got the blood moving and shaken out the cobwebs.

How to do it without assigning “exercise”?

Make a list. Sit down with your kids and brainstorm as many ways of being active as you can come up with. Limit yourselves to ideas that are actually possible from home – no point is listing “go skiing” if that requires hours of time, a lift ticket, and a drive to the slopes. Be inclusive. Gardening and cleaning the garage together count.
Include indoor ideas as well as outdoor ones. Jogging through the house, up and down the stairs, to loud music and marking off each circuit as you pass the kitchen can be just as much fun as a jog around the block. Try dancing. Even lifting weights can be fun if it’s done for fun, not for “exercise.”
Aim for being “active” not for being tired. There’s plenty to be gained without needing to feel any pain. All activity is good and leads to more activity later. Just get your kids moving, don’t worry too much about how hard or how fast.
Commit to a span of time each day. Maybe 20 minutes, maybe 30, with the option always to keep playing or keep going longer if you want. If you can, establish a dependable time every day for activity – maybe before dinner. But getting some activity in each day is more important than keeping to a schedule.
Have fun. If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong. Be active in a way that makes you and your kids happy.

Activity is good for everybody, and your children might find it easier to be active if you’re active along with them. Go for it. Make this a family thing.

Just don’t call it “exercise.”

Many years ago, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, he and his wife Rosalynn were criticized for permitting daughter Amy to read books at the dinner table. These days, reading during dinner seems pretty tame. These days, parents struggle to keep the TV off and the cell phones away.

You might think that letting kids (and you!) bring devices to the table is not worth fighting about. Even though it’s obvious that those who bring their electronic friends to dinner aren’t very good at making conversation with the rest of the family, it seems harmless enough. And maybe you don’t really want to hear what your teens have to say anyway!

Researcher Jayne Fulkerson from the University of Minnesota School of Nursing found out you’re not alone. Her study reports that “mealtime media use is common among families with adolescents.” She found, though, that not only was conversation between parents and teens reduced. Nutrition of the meals served was too.

To begin the study, Fulkerson and her research team surveyed more than 1,800 parents, asking how often their preteen and teen children watched TV, talked on the phone, texted, played games or listened to music using headphones during family meals.

Two-thirds of parents said teens watched TV or movies during meals at least some of the time and one-quarter said the TV is on during meals very often or always. About a quarter of parents also said their adolescents texted, talked on the phone, played video games or listened to music through headphones during a family meal. This is a lot of media use.

What’s most surprising comes next. Parents were asked to describe a typical family dinner at which teens might be using all this media. Parents who reported the most media use by their teens reported the least nutritious meals. The dinners they described included fewer servings of salad, fruit and vegetables, and substituted soda, energy drinks, or 100% juice for milk.

This seems to indicate that at mealtimes in many homes, everyone is disconnected from the two purposes of dinner, which are to reconnect with each other at the end of the day and to share a meal that is well-balanced and healthful.

The researchers didn’t ask the parents if they also used electronic devices during dinner. Fulkerson said, however, “In several surveys I have done with parents and youths, they have indicated that there is a lot of multitasking going on.”

This matters. Especially during the teen-age years, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open. Expecting kids to be present at dinner at least a couple times a week – and to engage with other diners instead of with media – provides an opportunity for pleasant conversation and for catching up with what your kids are thinking.

In addition, nutrition is especially important during the teen years, when brain development spikes to levels not seen since preschool and when bone and muscle development move just as fast. Teens may not get the nutrition their bodies need without adult guidance. The best way to deliver that guidance is to prepare good food for the entire family and expect teens to be at the table to share it.

If you’ve given up on cooking because it’s too hard to compete against the lure of electronics, it’s time to make a change. Start small, with one or two intentional dinners per week. Expand the dinner schedule until more than half your family’s dinners are true family affairs.

And enforce a new rule: devices off and away. Instead, talk to each other!

If this hasn’t happened in your household yet, it will soon: your preteen or teen asks permission to do something that makes you stop dead in your tracks. Maybe he wants to go on a friends-only camping trip. Maybe she wants to go to school 2000 miles away. Maybe your child wants to start wearing make-up, start playing in a rock band, or host a boy-girl sleepover in your basement.

Two ideas jump into your mind: “NO!” and “Am I being unreasonable?” How can you tell which idea is right?

Linda Messina, writing recently in the New York Times, suggests a way to decide when to say yes to something your teen wants to do. Messina suggests asking two questions:

Am I ready for this?
Will I ever be ready for this?

She goes on to propose that if a parent isn’t yet ready for whatever her child wants to do but will be ready someday, then it’s okay to wait. But if a parent isn’t ready for this now and will never be ready for it, then waiting holds a child back.

The difference lies in who needs to grow. If it’s your child who needs to grow, so that when he is older you’ll be fine with whatever he’s asking to do, then waiting allows for that growth and waiting makes sense. But if it’s you who needs to grow, in order to accept your child’s new level of autonomy and capabilities, then making the child wait for your growth is unfair.

One of the most difficult parts of being a parent is letting go. Our role is to guide children carefully, giving them the skills and good judgment to handle what’s coming, and then step back and let them go at it. Whether it’s heading off to kindergarten or heading off to college, this stepping back is very hard. We’re not ready. We’ll never really be ready. So we need to let go.

At the same time, children often pull ahead, led by their friends or the media or just a hare-brained idea, to ask for privileges and permissions for which they’re not ready. They will be ready someday and someday we’ll be happy to let them try their wings. But first they need to grow up a bit more.

If children need to grow up a bit more, then help that to happen. Kids grow in their ability to make decisions and foresee consequences only when they have opportunities to try. While your child is under your protection, increase her level of challenge. Meet a request you think is too big for her, not with “no” but with a compromise.

Believe me, you will never be totally comfortable letting your children go. You will always want to give them “good advice.” Growing up happens to both of you. At those moments when you realize your children have grown into their abilities, it’s time for you to grow into them too.

The research has been around for over 40 years but some parents still haven’t got the message. Babies need conversation. Small children need conversation. Conversation is essential to children’s intellectual development.

And some children get more – much more – conversation than others. It adds up by preschool to a 30 million word gap.

A study conducted in 1968 by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, described in their book Meaningful Differences, tallied the number of words 40 children heard on average in the first three years of life. The differences were astonishing, with some toddlers hearing only about 500 words per hour (that’s just 10 words each minute) and some toddlers hearing more than twice that number. Children who hear more words per hour at age three heard more words earlier in life, meaning they had heard more words each hour for more total hours. It all added up to a difference at age three of about 30 million words.

New studies have replicated Hart and Risley’s original findings. The difference in the level of family conversation has not leveled out. Stanford University is the latest to report this difference and also evidence of a difference in children’s thinking ability at 18 months. This is important. A bigger, richer vocabulary is not just good all by itself. Conversation isn’t just conversation. When parents talk with their small children, children develop concepts and learn to think in ways that children miss out on if their parents don’t talk to them much.

So words are important but it’s not just quantity of talk, it’s quality too. As Dana Suskind, professor of surgery and pediatrics at University of Chicago puts it, “We can’t just have people saying 30 million times ‘stop it!’ It’s got to be much more.” And of course, if parents are have lots of conversations with their children, they are doing more than just barking orders. They are talking about what’s happening, what they might do next, how things feel and look and taste, and they’re asking children to share their opinions too. They’re asking questions and giving answers.

Children who don’t hear very many words get a double-whammy: they not only have few conversations but the conversations they do have tend to be unpleasant. When parents don’t have much to say to their kids, what they do say tends to be direct orders and corrections, not pleasant interactions.

Research into number of words heard at first drew a connection between conversation level and family finances. It found that children in the poorest households were talked with less by their parents than more advantaged children were. Now this isn’t so clear. Now, alarmingly, low levels of conversation are linked as well to affluent parents who spend a lot of time on their cell phones and tablets, talking or texting with people other than their children. Overheard conversations and talk on radio or TV don’t count. They don’t increase a child’s experience with language. Even your own child could be at risk.

What can you do?

Talk with your children, of course. Children who are talked with by both parents get more, naturally, than children with only one parent as a conversational partner, so both mothers and fathers should make an effort to talk with their children.
Start early. Talk with your baby from birth on, about anything and everything.
Listen to your child. When your child is very little, “listening” will be just leaving space for him to raise his eyebrows or coo at you. As your child grows, be a patient listener. In order to “own” words, children have to use words.

A great resource for parents is the Three Million Words initiative in Chicago, and its lovely website.

The tremendous difference in words heard in just three years should be a wake-up call for all parents. This is easy and it costs nothing. Give your child the gift of conversation and start today!

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