July is National Make a Difference to a Child Month so I decided to focus on that for this week’s topic. Children are so important to the future and we have to teach them and guide them on how to live healthy lives and make good decisions. So as always, our focus in this article will be teaching children about living a healthy lifestyle.

Teaching children about the importance of fruits and vegetables in their diet is one of the best places to start. The base of a healthy lifestyle starts with what you put in your mouth. For the most part, children today don’t understand why they should eat fruits and vegetables and how eating healthy affects their body. Another problem is that a lot of adults don’t fully understand this either so it’s hard for them to teach their children. So I found this article from The American Heart Association where they provide tips for teaching kids how to eat to be heart healthy. The rest of the website has some great information as well.

Staying active is another important part of living a healthy lifestyle. When I was younger, my parents always required that I be a part of some type of sport or activity. I never understood why until I grew up and realized how important being active was to being healthy. And of course just telling your child they need to be active doesn’t impact them as much if you aren’t active too. As they say ‘a family that plays together stays together’. So read this article from the USA Today and find some great way to stay active and have fun this summer as a family. Feel free to share your own ideas in the comments section.

As we know, children get tired of listening to their parents sometimes and would rather take tips from their peers. So if you’re having trouble getting through to your child, share with these tips from students Cuesta College in California. These students came up with some great ways to eat healthy while in college and the tips can also be applied to younger students who are still at home. Or you can encourage your child to take a cooking class like these students in California who are learning to cook with vegetables. When a child learns to do something themselves they become more invested in it and more prone to do it. Who know, you may even find you’ve had an amateur chef living in your home.