There are more than five things that parents need to teach their children about how to live a healthy and active life, but I’m going to try and pick my favorite five.
1. Eat Well
And I think the first one that’s really important, not really related to chiropractic, is how to eat well. It’s so important that you eat healthy foods, and you eat things that are good for you. These habits start early. If you’re rewarding your kid with sugary snacks and these different things, then they’re going to get programmed that way, that when I do good things, I get snacks, I get sugar, I get treats. And so, we kind of build that problem into society today. There are a lot of people with unhealthy diets.
Teach them about the four basic food groups, the information we now have is a food pyramid that is different than what we learned growing up. But really when you look at the information, it’s essentially the same. So, taking in good proper nutrition is one.
2. Sleep Well
The other one is getting plenty of rest, right? And again, I’m not delivering any earth-shattering news, but making sure that you sleep is important because your body heals when it’s at rest. Your body will not heal when you’re up and running about all day long, right? It heals when you’re at rest. And that’s why it’s important. And that’s why when you’re sick or injured, you feel that malaise, achy, tired. It’s your body’s own wisdom telling you that you need to sleep.
3. Move Well
You need to move well, you’ve got to get these kids moving and exercising and stretching, right? And again, these habits are going to get learned early in age. My dad was a big guy into fitness. He was into sports. So as soon as we could stand, we were put on ice skates. And as soon as we could run, we were playing sports. Get those kids out there active and moving. It’s fine that you have a studious child, and they need to get educated and they need to be able to have the patience to sit and learn, but they also need to exercise and move. So, you’ve got to eat well, you’ve got to sleep well, and you’ve got to move well.
4. Think Well
The other thing is thinking well, right? We talk about stress. And believe it or not, these kids today are under a lot of stress. The educational load put on these children is much more significant at a very early age compared to what you and I went through. I distinctly recall, I don’t even remember learning the alphabet until we were in first grade when we were learning to read. Most of these kids in kindergarten know the alphabet and they already know how to read. So, they’re putting an educational demand on these kids early and then they start to get stressed. And then if they’re not performing well, they compare them to the other kids and then they start labeling them.
I think it’s really important that kids have a healthy childhood, and the understanding is that not every kid is going to be the same. They’re not all going to be able to apply themselves in english and literature. Some of them are going to be better at math and science, and some of them are going to be better at more physical activities. We need to understand their differences and make sure that we don’t put unreal expectations on our kids and stress them out.
5. Have a Healthy Nervous System
The last thing, of course, is having a proper healthy nerve system and chiropractic is a big component of that. Stress tension, poor posture, accidents, falls can cause misalignments or subluxations, which irritate the delicate spinal nerves. Remember that the nerve system really coordinates everything that the body does from processing information to healing the body and replacing damaged cells with healthy new ones. It’s so important that that nerve system is optimized and running like a DSL or a T1 line, not that crappy dial-up we started up with. When those bones misalign and put pressure on those delicate spinal nerves, it slows down spinal nerve function to a trickle instead of a flood of information.
There is a lot that goes into building a healthy kid. These are five things that are definitely super important, and I can probably make the list twice as long and spend twice as much time here on this topic.
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 20 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (917) 534-6484 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
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