Kids’ health is a major concern for every parent, and it is important to keep the kids healthy during school. While at home, parents can give them a safe and healthy environment but a school may be a challenging environment for maintaining health for every kid. One common incident that parents always come across is the tiffin break. Children often come back home without eating any of the food. Another common incident is not washing hands before eating food, which may lead to the transmission of germs into the gut of the child. Although there are challenges, parents can still manage a healthy environment and teach the right etiquette during school.
Parents should be mindful of the school environment before enrolling. This helps parents understand the possibilities of their child to remain healthy during school. The cues about the school environment and records of experiences of children help to develop strategies that parents and teachers could implement to ensure a healthy environment and healthy child during the entire schooling period. So, let us explore some healthy tips to keep your child healthy.
Challenges to keep kids healthy during school:
There could be several challenges when you are tackling to maintain your kid’s health. Kids are curious little humans who rationalise way too little about activities they would like to do. They will also not be aware of ways to be healthy until parents and teachers tell them. Nevertheless, the following is a summary of the challenges you may face about your kids’ health when they are in school:
- Unhealthy snacking:
- Time:
- Hydration challenges:
- Hygiene practices:
Children often love junk food, and there are high chances that they may refuse to eat the healthy lunch packed for them. This would also mean starvation during school hours, which could hamper their health.
Children may not be able to have the eagerness to eat food during the lunch break and may end up skipping eating. This would affect their eating hours, in turn affecting their nutritional health.
Adults often struggle with hydration challenges considering their hectic lives. The scenario is even more challenging for children during school hours. This is because they are too naive to understand the importance of hydration and probably would drink water only when they felt thirsty. However, they need to drink water at regular intervals, even when they are not thirsty, to carry out many metabolic processes in the body.
Children are often not aware of hygiene practices, or they may not even understand what hygiene all is about. It is common and normal among budding kids who are still trying to understand life. The lack of awareness could, however, lead to incidents of eating food from the floor during school, eating without washing hands, drinking water that has been left open in the bottle for a long time, etc.
Tips to keep a child healthy during the school hours:
Parents and teachers must be very tactical with children when ensuring their health. In larger incidences, a child may often do the opposite of what is told out of a fun component. Parents must understand their child’s psychology when dealing with teaching them life lessons. This holds, especially when you want to keep them healthy in school. Following are some of the ways that a parent can ensure that the kids are kept healthy during school. However, each parent-child bond may be unique and could be customised based on values, family background, cultural differences, etc.
- Health tips for kids:
- Vaccination:
- Hand washing:
- Boosting immunity:
- Psychological symptoms:
- Good sleep hygiene:
- Importance of diet:
Children should be educated about being healthy and provided ‘one health tip’ once a week to put into practice during school.
Parents need to address their vaccination requirements and encourage other parents to vaccinate their children to boost immunity against air-borne and water-borne diseases that may spread among kids in school.
Kids should be taught the right way of washing hands and educated about the reasons why they should wash their hands.
If your child often experiences immunity issues or is immunocompromised, try to add healthy food options in colourful lunch boxes to encourage them to eat them. Innovation in food preparation could help in the consumption of those food items that can boost immunity among children.
A parent shares a strong bond with children, and this could help in detecting early signs of anxiety and stress that a child may experience. Once school begins, a child indeed feels peer pressure, educational performance pressure, and social pressure. Psychological health should also be regularly monitored and intervened to keep kids healthy during school.
Kids should not sleep in school during class as it may slow down the learning process and also violate the rules of the classroom. Therefore, ensure your child has slept well before school so that they are active in school.
Children should often be educated about eating during recess and not to waste or skip food during this time. A reward system always works best to encourage them to eat their healthy snacks during recess.
There are several ways to help children stay healthy during school. The role of parents and teachers is vital in this endeavour, and the need to educate the child on this topic is also vital. At Kangaroo Kids International Preschool, we are here to help students indulge in an environment where they can learn about keeping themselves healthy during school. To learn more, contact us today!
