A healthy lifestyle is vastly underrated in the present times. The power of having a healthy lifestyle is such that it can take you a long way in terms of treating a disease and preventing it in the first place. Lifestyle coach Luke Coutinho in his recent video on Facebook talks about raising children in the right and healthy way by educating them and making them aware of healthy lifestyle habits. He primarily focuses on children between the ages 2 to 7, which are the formative years of a child’s future.

Luke says that ages 2 to 7 is the hypnotic stage of a child. This means that whatever your child goes through at this stage, starts forming in his/her subconscious mind. 95% of your subconscious mind – which controls majority of your life – is formed during childhood.

Activities like brushing teeth every morning, driving safely etc are done using your subconscious mind. The values and practices that you teach your child at this age are going to stay with him/her throughout life.

For instance, children who watch violence or anger or any negative emotions on the television, it tends to stay with them forever. This is why the age-old tradition of not allowing children to watch any and every kind of content on TV has worked wonders for parents in the past.

What to teach your child between the ages 2-7?

1. Avoid telling things out of fear

Luke mentions in his video that telling your children things like ‘avoid sugar because it can cause cancer’, is extremely wrong. Firstly, things like these are factually wrong and secondly this fear only grows in the child’s subconscious mind over the years. Caution children about healthy and unhealthy foods, the right quantities in which they should be eating them and how too much of anything is bad for health. Choose your words wisely and avoid teaching them anything out of authority and fear.

2. Choose what you need to tell your child

Try to show your child the good and bad of everything. Do not teach your children to hate food. Don’t tell about the foods that are bad. In fact, tell them all about the foods which are great for your health. Teach them to value food, the importance of family, love, care, relationship, respect and manners.

3. Teach them through storytelling

Children enjoy and engage with stories in the best way. So, whatever you want to teach them, try it through a story. Children relate to fantasy and stories together.

You should try to convey the message that your body can heal you and that medicine is not usually required for every ailment. This will enable them to grow as adults who will think if a particular disease can be healed with home remedies and lifestyle changes, before they decide to consult a doctor.

4. Be a role model

Lead by example for children and do things which are going to help your child in the long run. If you keep switching from one diet to the other or are constantly conscious about your physical appearance and not overall health, your child is going to grow up learning the same things.

5. Talk about positive things when your child is asleep

Telling your child that s/he is strong, or can heal himself and that everything is going in the right direction can be really helpful overall well-being. It boosts the self-confidence of children.

The idea is to use the ages 2 to 7 to teach your child everything about holistic healing, positive attitude and the power of a healthy lifestyle. It is all going to stay with your child for his/her whole life.

(Luke Coutinho, Holistic Lifestyle Coach – Integrative Medicine)

Courtesy:NDTV