Teaching Tots Healthy Habits

Pre-school children are like little sponges - soaking in knowledge, observing their parents, and imitating the other children and adults around them. It's great when we adults can actually model some positive behaviors and ingrain some positive habits at that age. I'll never forget my niece Emily, three at the time, informing me that I should "never ever" start the car until everyone was buckled in. Her parents had done a great job teaching her this important piece of safety information and she had adopted this habit as her own. I bet when Emily finally turns sixteen and is herself in the driver's seat, that even then she'll "never ever" start the car before everyone is buckled in. The following article reports on a New Jersey pre-school who has built their curriculum around teaching nutrition and developing a healthy diet and lifestyle. The Nutritional Sciences Preschool at Rutgers University believes that their program is worthwhile: by teaching these positive habits early, they feel these children will have a lifetime of good nutrition and healthy life style choices. Reports on a New Zealand study found that time watching television is the most accurate predictor of childhood obesity. This is certainly an intuitive result since time spent watching TV means less time spent in activities that burn calories. Still, the fact that the tube watching factor trumped parental weight and socioeconomic class was somewhat surprising. Parents and kids should take note of this groundbreaking study and respond accordingly by reducing TV viewing time and replacing it with more rigorous activities.