Fifty Key Messages – Tips for a healthy diet for you and your child
(From Tusla’ s parenting24seven website)
Children form their eating habits from a young age, therefore, it is important to guide them in the right direction and give them an understanding of a balanced nutritional diet mixed with an active lifestyle.
There are many different websites and publications that can help you choose the best types of food for your child. But, there are a few things to remember:
- A healthy balanced diet is important to ensure your child grows and develops to their full potential;
- Healthy diets balanced with fun activities help strengthen their bones and muscles. It also helps brain development;
- Make meals a family occasion where you all sit down and have a chat;
- Try a variety of different food types, you would be surprised what your child likes;
- Encourage your child to become involved in food preparation, this will support an interest in food as well as providing an opportunity to spend some time with your child;
- Try and have a mix of vegetables, dairy, fruit and carbohydrates (like potatoes, pasta, etc.);
- Avoid fast food and food high in sugar and fats;
- Children should do at least 60 minutes of exercise a day and it doesn’t have to be done all at once;
- Make exercise fun and join in where you can… it will help you too.
- Do not force a particular food on a child, this will result in them never eating it and will probably make them ‘go off’ eating other food;
- Children do not need the same amount of food as adults;
- Try and limit the amount of treats given, treats should NOT be offered as a reward;
- Offer water instead of fizzy drinks.
For more information, please click on the links below:
https://www.safefood.eu/Childhood-Obesity/Welcome.aspx
https://www.safefood.eu/Healthy-Eating/Food,-Diet-and-Health/Life-Stages.aspx
https://www.healthpromotion.ie/health/healthy_eating
For more Key Messages see https://www.tusla.ie/parenting-24-seven/6-12-years/
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Infant Mental Health Awareness Week runs from June 13th-19th.
This week provides an opportunity to focus attention on the wellbeing, social and emotional development of our babies and young children. It highlights the importance of early relationships and a relationship based approach to interventions with infants and families. As our understanding of IMH and its evidence base develops, so also does our knowledge of how to apply this knowledge and an ‘IMH lens’ to interactions with infants, parents and caregivers in health and social services.
What is infant mental health?
Infant Mental health (IMH) refers to the healthy social and emotional development of Infants starting at conception up to three years of age.
The first 1000 days of life are recognised as a critical period of opportunity to support infant mental health. Decades of research have shown that it is the quality of the early caregiver relationship that is a significant determinant of the infant’s healthy social and emotional development and in turn physical health, right up to adulthood.
The National Healthy Childhood Programme has embedded IMH as the foundation of the development of its resources and in the approach of the delivery of the universal child health service. This embedding of key messages can be seen in the My Child suite of books (www.mychild.ie/books) and also on www.MyChild.ie where key messages around bonding and relationship building have been embedded for the parent/caregiver.
In clinical practice the topic of IMH has been included for the first time in the National Standardised Child Health Record. To build on this, the National Healthy Childhood Programme have just completed a suite of three eLearning units which are now available on HSEland for healthcare practitioners / caregivers who are working with children and families.
Throughout the week you will see videos and key IMH messaging being promoted on the HSE MyChild social media pages ( Facebook / Instagram ). Keep an eye out in the National Newspapers for articles from our experts also. (IrishTimes article)
In addition The National Healthy Childhood Programme have developed a series of ten practical videos with HSE expert advice which are now available on YouTube and on the relevant pages on the www.mychild.ie website.
These videos (2-3 minutes each) are aimed at parents/guardians of children (0 – 3 years).
These new video resources are available here while lots more expert advice for every step of pregnancy, baby and toddler health can also be found at www.mychild.ie
There are a suite of posters available focusing on the promotion of IMH messaging to order from healthy.childhood@hse.ie
Great info , good thanks.