Healthy active living includes eating nutritious foods, staying physically active, and getting enough sleep. Early childhood is the best time to start healthy habits. Young children depend on the adults around them to shape their habits. Head Start programs can model healthy behaviors and partner with families in support of healthy habits at home.
Why is healthy active living important?
Research tells us that the way young children eat, move, and sleep can affect their health now and in the future. Getting enough sleep and nutrition helps children pay more attention in school, grow their bodies, and get sick less often. It is never too early to encourage healthy habits like:
- Breastfeeding/chestfeeding for at least the first six months of life, when possible
- Eating healthy meals and snacks
- Moving and being active every day
- Getting enough sleep and rest
Keep it simple!
Offer families easy ways to build healthy habits into their child’s lives as early as possible. Share the 5, 2,1, 0 plan with families.
5: Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables a day.
2: Keep screen time (like TV, video games, computer) down to 2 hours or less per day.
1: Get 1 hour or more of physical activity every day.
0: Drink 0 sugar-sweetened drinks. Replace sodas, sports drinks, and fruit drinks with milk or water.These simple actions have been shown to make the biggest health impact. Help families choose practical health goals. Small successes slowly become long-term benefits.
Promoting Healthy Active Living with Families
Partner with families to model activities and share information that support health and well-being. Programs can model activities that keep children active, teach habits like toothbrushing, and introduce new foods. They can offer families information and ideas to try at home.
Model Healthy Activities at the Program
Many activities in Head Start programs are meant to support children’s health and well-being. Use them to start conversations with families. Let families know why staff do these things, and how they keep children well:
- Use daily health checks to model how health can affect learning. Tell families that staff want to know if a child is hungry, tired, or uncomfortable. If so, they may be less able to pay attention, manage their feelings, and remember what they learn.
- Consider health when doing assessments, screenings, and looking at child data. Children who are hungry, tired, or ill might not show all they really know. Staff can change their expectations and give extra support when children need food or rest.
- Find ways to help children be active for 10–15 minutes several times each day, at the program and at home. An hour of active play might seem like a lot, but it doesn’t have to be all at one time. Show families how staff get children up and moving on rainy days or for short periods.
- Make sure everyone washes their hands when they come into the classroom. Let families know that washing hands with soap and water is the best way to keep everyone from getting sick.
Partnering with Families on Healthy Active Living at Home
Before speaking with families, consider how to begin the conversation and offer information. Start with getting to know each family’s ideas, goals, and concerns about living a healthy active life. Talk with families about how to address common challenges and how to change habits. Money, time, cultural expectations, and many other things affect our habits.
Conversations can happen at any time of day. Ask family members if they have time to talk. The family partnership process, family engagement events, pick-up, and drop-off offer natural times to connect with families. Listen for families’ thoughts, goals, and concerns related to healthy habits. Conversations may be about the children at first but ask adults how they feel about these habits as well. Adults may have their own goals they would like support with achieving.
Tips for partnering with families:
- Ask families how they think and talk about health. Avoid words that families might consider judgmental or critical like “obese” or “overweight.” Find out what their health goals for their family are. Health is not about weight or size.
- Work with families to ensure children have access to healthy meals, including breakfast. Children who regularly eat healthy food are more likely to develop as expected. They have more energy to learn, play, and be active. The program offers some meals, but staff can also offer families resources to meet their goals at home:
- Programs can partner with families to get food assistance when appropriate. Use the family partnership process to assess families’ needs and wants related to healthy foods.
- Let families know about low-cost, seasonal fruits and vegetables, with ideas for how to prepare them in a healthy way. Families can learn new recipes at family engagement events and share ideas for getting children to try new foods.
- Offer ideas for how to start new habits. For example, setting limits on sugary beverages, like sodas and juice.
- Make sure information about breastfeeding/chestfeeding is easily available to families. Babies who are breastfed/chestfed for at least six months are more likely to grow up with a healthy weight. Remember that not all families can breastfeed/chestfeed in the same way. Offer resources on the many ways to feed a baby, including information for non-birthing caregivers and transgender and non-binary caregivers.
- Help families when they want to limit screen time. Give families ideas for how to set boundaries, give children other things to do, and avoid challenging behaviors when reducing screen time. A great way to cut down on screen time is to make a rule for “no television (or computer, cell phone, hand-held games, tablets) while eating.”
- If children cannot play outside because of danger or the weather, they need to play inside to stay healthy and keep their bodies moving. Offer creative ideas for safe and active indoor play.
- Make time for families to share their ideas and experiences in healthy active living. Use family engagement events to share information and stories.
Head Start programs are responsible for promoting growth and development, making healthy foods available, and having safe spaces for active play. Partnering with families to develop healthy habits at home supports long-term health for both children and families.
Last Updated: December 23, 2024