*This is a collaborative post

Tips for Keeping your Family Healthy

How do you keep your family healthy? When your first child comes along, if you’re anything like me when he was a baby I had all these ideas of what he was going to eat, what he wasn’t going to eat and how life was going to be as a family. In truth, life is nothing ever like the ideals you have and as your child gets older you realise that they are a force of will on their own, no matter what you think is the best. Life, in my opinion, is about balance and doing your best.

My Tips to Keep Your Family Healthy

Here are some tips that work for my family on I on how to keep us healthy and live life in a balanced way.

• Embrace the outdoors. It’s not been so easy lately with all of the rain we have had, but this week has obviously brought with it some lovely sunshine. Get your children out in the garden. Make dens and mud pies, we have a trampoline which my children love and is great exercise. Give them seeds to grow and water and get them out in the fresh air, but most importantly make it fun. A bit of germs and Vitamin D is good for children and adults alike. But also it is much more exciting to eat the fruit and vegetables you have been involved in growing.
• Walk to school. A really simple one and I appreciate that not everyone can. But come rain or shine we always walk to school, we have waterproofs for the rain and sun hats for the warm weather. But as we have never driven my children don’t consider it an option and it means we always hit our 30 minutes of exercise every day.

• Hide the vegetables in the food. My son loves vegetables – he’s an unusual child! But my daughter is more of a tricky customer. So a great way to get more vegetables into her diet is to hide them! Chop or even grate carrots, courgette and celery into your bolognese, make orange mash by adding carrots to it. Jamie Oliver has a great sausage pasta recipe that goes down a treat with my children and it contains celery, carrots, tomatoes and spring onions and it always goes down well.
• We talk about treats just being treats, it’s ok to have cakes and chocolate and even fast food, but only if it’s every now and then. Excluding them from your child’s diet just makes them taboo and means that as soon as they’re at a party or something they go crazy, so we include them in our diets in a measured way. Let’s face it, life is better when you have treats every now and then.
• Don’t forget about mental health. We’ve reviewed a book about mindfulness recently and I am also a firm believer in gratitude. Each night at bedtime my children and I write down their 3 good things from each day to reflect on all the things that have made them happy.
• If you are concerned about your child’s health in any way, do take them to see your GP. Guys & St Thomas, a private hospital in London, also offer comprehensive private paediatric services if you have private healthcare too.

Take a Daily Multi-Vitamin

Take a daily vitamin as a top-up. Did you know that the latest UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey indicates that only 8% of children are achieving their 5-a-day, and 29% of children under 5 are not getting the recommended daily amount of Vitamin D. That’s quite a surprisingly low amount of children, so a daily vitamin is a great way of getting around this. 

We’ve worked with Alive! multi-vitamins on this blog several times and they are now a daily feature in our house, my children enjoy them so much that they ask for them if I forget to give them to them with their breakfast. So I would definitely recommend them not only for your children, but for your whole family.

Alive! Children’s Soft Jells are suitable for children aged 3-12 years and contain optimised levels of all the essential vitamins and minerals that children need, including Vitamin C and Zinc to support normal immunity and Vitamin D to support immunity and normal bones. They come as a complete with a unique dried blend of 26 Fruits and Vegetables. They are deliciously fruity, and are made with only natural fruit flavours and I can attest to the fact that they are great tasting vegetarians.

Alive Children’s Soft Jells RRP £14.99 and are available from Boots and Holland & Barrett and are currently on offer direct from Nature’s Way.

Buy Children’s Soft Jells on Nature’s Way