Summer Health Tips for Children

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Health is never a priority for your children but it is for you. It’s manageable with some careful planning throughout the school year.

However, when summertime rolls around, any strategy you had in place goes out the window. School provides structure for your kids and this creates normalcy.

Without any structure or obligations, it can be easy for children to fall into bad habits that sabotage their health during the summer.

Great examples of this include over/undersleeping, lack of exercise, and participating in risky activities. This leads to complications like injuries, weight gain, and sleeping problems in children.

Fortunately, you can keep your kids as healthy as possible with a few useful tips. We’ll provide you with some great ones below!

Create a Routine

You should begin by creating a daily routine for your kids.

During the school year, a routine is fairly natural because they have somewhere to be five days a week. School starts at the same time every day, so their days are structured around school.

Summer eliminates this and your kids are left with nothing that they need to do. This is particularly challenging because it means that they don’t need to wake up at a certain time, nor feel like they should sleep at a specific time.

Your kids might want to stay up early into the morning, which will affect their sleep schedule. They will either end up sleeping later into the day or get less sleep.

Neither situation is ideal and both negatively impact your child. Sleep is incredibly important for growing children, so they must get adequate sleep even during the summer.

The best way to do this is by setting a bedtime. Feel free to push it back beyond what it usually is during the school year, but have a time so that your kids will at least try to sleep at the same time each night.

From here, it’s much simpler to create a daily summer routine involving times for meals, activities, learning, and relaxation.

Encourage Physical Activity

During the day, you should encourage frequent physical activity.

Kids today have so much technology that they might not think about going outside. Why feel uncomfortable in the hot sun when you can see beautiful landscapes in a video game?

Technology has provided so much entertainment and stimulation that many kids don’t get enough exercise. This can lead to health complications and weight gain.

As your children likely won’t do it themselves, you should encourage them to get some physical activity. Better yet, do it with them to make the experience more enjoyable.

Make a point of getting at least an hour of physical activity each day to keep your kids active during the summer.

Practice Sun Safety

While your kids are spending time outdoors, make sure that they practice sun safety.

As you likely know, kids hate safety. Nobody wants to wear a bike helmet, knee pads, or put on sunscreen. It’s just not cool.

That said, sunscreen and sun safety is important and it’s up to you to make it happen. The two most significant considerations include hydration and sunscreen.

Kids need to be drinking water throughout the entire day. They aren’t likely to enjoy this, so try mixing it up by adding flavors, providing alternative beverages, and taking advantage of other hydration sources by incorporating fruit into their diet.

They must also wear sunscreen to defend against UV rays. Before they spend any time in the sun, they should have SPF 30 or higher on all exposed skin.

These two aspects of sun safety are essential to avoiding a heat-related injury and ensuring a smooth summer.

Respect the Water

Finally, teach your children to respect the water anytime they’re swimming or near a body of water.

Children are quite naive due to their inexperience and this can put them in dangerous situations. While water may seem calm and harmless, it is dangerous and deadly if not taken seriously.

Your children must understand that they should not play in or around water without an adult around. Even if they know how to swim, something unexpected can happen and cause them to lose their bearings.

Swimming is certainly fun, but it must be enjoyed responsibly. Make sure your kids always know to wait for an adult or lifeguard because it is not safe otherwise.

Closing Thoughts

If you want to keep your kids healthy this summer, you need to keep a close eye on them. A lack of structure leads to bored kids, who don’t always make the smartest, healthiest, or safest choices.

However, you can help your children by implementing a few health-conscious strategies. This includes creating a daily routine and bedtime, encouraging daily physical activity, practicing sun safety, and teaching them to respect the water.

Being healthy isn’t fun, but you don’t have to make it a hassle. If your child has a good understanding of why something’s necessary, they’re much less likely to resist it!