Date Added: August 29, 2008 03:09:18 PM
Healthy children learn more easily, play more joyfully, meet challenges more readily, and enjoy life more. And they almost always grow into healthy adults.
In their ages, children share the same basic health needs. Ensuring their good health means giving them a happy home, with the kind of food, exercise, rest, and protection that will help them grow well and stay well.
Growth is not a steady process. Children grow rapidly at some times and slowly at others. During his first year, a baby grows sensationally fast, trebling his birth weight and adding about nine inches to his height. If he were to go on growing at this rate, he would end up being about half a mile tall. But after about one year, his growth slows down. Thus, a long baby will not necessarily grow into a tall adult. However, by the age of 18 months for girls and 2 years for boys, a child will already have reached about half his adult height. And a toddler who is heavier and taller than his companions will usually maintain his lead throughout childhood.
Child growth period in ages 7 to 11 are the slowest growth period of all, but between 10 and 12, girls begin a growth spurt that puts them a couple of years ahead of boys. Boys have their growth spurt later, and although they may shoot up by as much as six inches in a single year, they generally go on growing for longer than girls, until they finally overtake their sisters once and for all.
A child's eventual size depends on many factors, including, of course, the body build he inherits from his parents. You want to know in advance how tall your child will grow? A simple piece of arithmetic will give you a clue. For a boy, add your height to your husband's, plus six inches, and divide by two. For a girl, subtract six inches from the combined heights before dividing.
Every mother knows that if a child is to grow strong and healthy, he needs the nourishment that comes from a well-balanced diet. This doesn't mean that you have to turn yourself into an expert nutritionist to figure out what your child should be eating. So long as you choose each day's meals, you can be sure of giving your child all the nutrition he needs.
Getting your child to eat seven different types of food, two or three times a day, can seem like a monumental task. But it becomes a whole lot easier if you think of your child's diet on a weekly, rather than a daily basis. A child's diet doesn't have to be perfectly balanced every day. He might skip his vegetables one day and go overboard on meat and eggs instead. Next day he might drink quarts of milk and very little else. Another day, he may stick mainly to fruit and cereal. But, provided his overall diet from week to week contains some food from each of the various groups, his nutritional requirements will be met.
Bear in mind that all the foods within each food group are interchangeable, and that fruits can be safely substituted for vegetables. That way, you will see that even the most important foods can be replaced, and when a child refuses foods that are "good for him," you can come up with an equally nutritious substitute. If children dislike eggs, they may eat cheese or meat instead. If they hate cooked vegetables, try offering raw vegetable salad, or a glass of vegetable juice, or simply switch to fruit instead. If they won't drink milk, maybe they will take it in custard, puddings, or soup. And don't forget that there is the equivalent of one pint of milk in a couple of ounces of cheese.
