Back to Basics

Nutrition, Exercise and Sleep are 3 core areas we can focus on to improve our wellbeing. If things are tough it is really important to go slow, put one foot in front of the other and pull it back to basics. Paying attention on purpose to what we do to our bodies is key to staying healthy.

Nutrition

The Parent Voice website is a VicHealth and Diabetes institute initiative which is driven by parents and is a great resource for finding healthy eating options. We recommend the ‘Our Work’ page and the ‘Blog’ page particularly the article ‘changing the way kids see vegetables’.

www.parentsvoice.org.au

The link between Mood and Food is undeniable. The Deakin University Initiative ‘The Mood and Food Centre’ is a wealth of information regarding healthy eating and mental health backed by research and has some great family recipes.

https://foodandmoodcentre.com.au/

Exercise

Change it up and be creative. Challenge yourself to find things that don’t cost money. The videos going around of ways people are using their homes and backyards to be active is hilarious and inspiring. You may have seen this one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eATxrkw7eeI

On a walk recently I saw a boy in his yard jumping on his trampoline whilst also doing jump rope with a hoola hoop and his sister was counting how many he could do.

Sleep

We can’t underestimate the need for sleep and some of good quality at that. Keeping routines, rituals and good hygiene around sleep will help make sleep time easier.

Here is a document on good sleep hygiene ‘Getting Kids to Sleep’

We also recommend a Meditation at night time for kids who resist their bedtime. For younger kids, Bedtime Meditations by Kristine Kerr. Any age kids, Smiling Mind and Stop, Think, Breathe Apps have a range of Bedtime Meditations.

Getting Kids to Sleep – by Michael Grose (parentingideas.com.au)

Sleep can be a vexatious issue for some parents: the amount of time spent trying to get kids to sleep, worrying about kids not sleeping, being woken up by kids who should be sleeping…it goes on and on!

So here are 5 tips for good sleep habits.

Good sleep habits include:

1 Regular bed-times Kids may fight this, but be regular during the week and let kids stay up a little later on weekends.

2 Have a wind-down time of up to 45 minutes prior to bed. This includes, removing TV and other stimuli, calming children down, and limiting food intake (and caffeine for teens).

3 An established bedtime routine that makes the brain associate behaviour such as cleaning your teeth and reading in bed with sleep.

4 Keeping bedrooms for sleep and not for TV. Bedrooms that resemble caves seem to be recommended.

5 Maximising the three sleep cues of: darkness (cave-like bedroom), lowering body temperature (baths can be good for this) and melatonin (work within their cycle).

These are helpful environment tips that the parents can assist with, however a lot of the time a child’s issue with getting to sleep is their inability to self-soothe. It is important that children have strategies that can assist them to relax and calm their mind and body in order to get to sleep and stay asleep.

Julie & Mia - Student Wellbeing

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