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Building Healthy Eating Habits from a Young Age

As a parent, promoting healthy and nutritious eating habits can sometimes be challenging with young children. However, these developmental years are crucial for building healthy eating habits that set children up for success later in life by encouraging balanced eating while also influencing their cognitive growth. Here are a few strategies for supporting healthy eating habits with your little one:

Be A Positive Role Model

Children often replicate what they see, even when it comes to daily habits and routines like choosing what to eat! As a parent or caregiver, modeling healthy, balanced eating habits helps to encourage children to follow suit. If they see you enjoying nutritious foods and moderating your intake of unhealthier options, they are much more likely to do the same.

Involve Children in Food Decisions

Enforcing healthy eating is often challenging for parents, but children can sometimes be more receptive when they’re offered choices and independence regarding what they want to eat. Having numerous healthy snack options or deciding together which healthy recipes to make for dinner gives them some control over their eating habits while still encouraging nutritious choices. Likewise, allowing children to be involved in food preparation, like cooking dinner or packing a lunch together, can spark an interest in healthy eating.

Balance Healthy Eating with Balanced Treats

It’s unrealistic to think that your child will eat 100% nutritious and healthy food all of the time. In fact, balancing nourishing food with occasional treats encourages children to make good food choices a majority of the time while allowing themselves completely normal indulgences on occasion. This helps to create life-long habits that are good for children without promoting restrictive or disordered eating.

Structure Meal and Snack Times

Children need regular meals and snacks to maintain their energy and focus throughout the day, and creating these structured times for eating can help to minimize the risk of over or under eating between meals. Having healthy and filling snacks on-hand can help moderate eating habits in younger children, while still providing proper nutrition to function throughout the day.

Building healthy eating habits early in life can be an important foundation for cultivating long-lasting wellness. Modeling a positive relationship with food while empowering children to make nutritious eating choices themselves can help your child to grow up making consistently balanced meal choices throughout the rest of their lives.

Staying Safe in the Summer Sun

As summer temperatures rise, it’s important to always keep skin safety in mind during your and your child’s outdoor adventures. The sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays, while one of the best parts of this season, can also be harmful to your child if proper precautions aren’t taken. Here are a few simple ways to beat the summer heat and stay safe out in the sun:

Sunscreen

No matter your child’s skin tone or pigmentation, sunscreen is an absolute must! Pediatric experts recommend using a sunscreen lotion with a SPF of at least 30 and applying it 30 minutes before direct sun exposure. It’s important also to remember to reapply throughout the day, especially if your child has gone swimming, as it may break down the sunscreen more quickly!

Hydrate

Outside of the dangers of burning and skin damage, summer heat can also cause dehydration. Make sure your child stays hydrated throughout the day with regular water breaks, particularly during active play, to ensure they stay energized and healthy.

Wear Appropriate Apparel

Light, breathable clothing is the best choice during hot summer as it reduces your child’s risk of overheating while protecting against harsh UV rays. Sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, or even long-sleeved t-shirts are also appropriate if you’re concerned about prolonged sun exposure or your child’s complexion is more prone to sunburn.

Take Breaks in the Shade

While you and your child likely want to enjoy the sunshine as much as possible this summer, it’s important to also take breaks in the shade to reduce direct sunlight exposure. 10 AM until 4 PM are usually considered the hottest parts of the day when the sun’s rays are strongest, so consider encouraging play in shaded areas during these times!

Staying safe in the summer sun is important for everyone, regardless of age. By preparing for outdoor time with plenty of water, sunscreen, and protective clothing options, you and your child can enjoy the sunny outdoors carefree all summer long!

Balancing Discipline and Compassion During Tantrums

Children experience stress, fear, and anger just like adults do, but they often don’t yet have the tools to manage these tough emotions in healthy and constructive ways. As a result, tantrums or meltdowns often occur, and can cause stress in home environments. Here are a few practical tips for practicing kind firmness with children during these moments to help them build their problem-solving skills while navigating difficult emotions.

Validate their feelings, not their actions

Acknowledging your child’s feelings can go a long way in making them feel understood and heard, and therefore less likely to lash out or meltdown. Simple phrases like, “I can understand why that made you upset” can help build rapport with your child and help them to talk through their emotions in more mature ways. It’s important to remember that validating their feelings doesn’t have to mean affirming their reactions to those feelings.

Practice positive reinforcement

Research shows that children respond best to positive rather than negative reinforcement in most cases. While discipline is important, particularly when dealing with tantrums, using positive reinforcement can often minimize the recurrence of these difficult behaviors. For example, praising positive behaviors or thanking your child when they do something kind or compassionate can build your child’s self-esteem and encourage them to handle stressful feelings in more productive ways.

Model problem-solving skills

Children often pick up on behaviors from their parents, siblings, and peers. For this reason, it’s important to make sure you exhibit healthy problem-solving skills, even during tantrums. Remaining calm and communicating with your child, even when you are angry or frustrated, will teach them to behave the same when faced with conflict.

Explain punishments

Time-outs or other forms of consequences can be useful when managing a child prone to tantrums. However, it’s important to communicate the reasoning behind these punishments to your child so that they understand that it is a direct consequence of unacceptable behavior. Punishment without explanation can sometimes make children feel targeted, unheard, or unloved, while open communication helps your child understand how they can avoid these consequences in the future.

As a parent, managing tantrums or meltdowns can often be stressful and overwhelming, but it can also be a learning opportunity for your child. Navigating these conflicts with patience, compassion, and understanding can help your child develop the problem-solving skills, resilience, and emotional intelligence necessary to minimize the occurrence of unacceptable behaviors in the future.

Heaven’s Elect Christian Learning Center is a Non-denominational Christian childcare center fully licensed by the state of Michigan. Our Midland childcare center has been serving the community since 2000. Please contact us at heavenselect.com.

Cultivating Resilience through Childcare

Children experience challenges, obstacles, and barriers just like adults do. The difference is that little ones often don’t have years of experience learning how to cope with tough emotions, problem-solve, or heal from these adversities. Childcare is one key way that children can begin to learn how to build resiliency and face life’s challenges head-on!

Creating a Safe Space

One of the first steps to building resiliency is creating a safe space for children to be open and vulnerable about their emotions and what they might be feeling. Choosing a childcare center where children’s emotions are considered and even encouraged can go a long way in building the foundations of resiliency. When children are allowed to fully feel their feelings, they are better able to communicate them to adults and, with time, process them.

Teaching Conflict Resolution Skills

Conflict is an inevitable part of life at any age, and instilling problem-solving and conflict resolution skills early in life helps set children up to handle disagreements calmly and respectfully. Encouraging children to work through their problems with their peers, rather than avoiding conflict or solving problems for them, empowers them to make their own decisions and handle their relationships independently in an age-appropriate way.

Cultivating Coping Skills

Regulating emotions can be tough for children, and this process often takes time, but teaching coping skills early in life helps children to become stronger and more emotionally mature adults. In order to cope with stress, disappointment, and other complex emotions on a daily basis, children must develop skills to cope with these tough feelings, thus building emotional resilience.

Encouraging Healthy Relationships

Healthy, and unhealthy, relationships are possible at every age. One of the many benefits of daycare is that your child is encouraged to form bonds with their peers and learn how to work through the challenges and benefits of these social relationships. Building connections and identifying connections that don’t make a child feel safe or valued, is a critical component of resiliency, and often carries on later into life.

At Heaven’s Elect, your child’s wellbeing, physical and emotional, is our top priority. Here, your little ones can build crucial and long-lasting resiliency skills that lead to healthier relationships, more positive interactions among peers, higher self-esteem and confidence, and a greater ability to handle any challenges that may come their way.

Heaven’s Elect Christian Learning Center is a Non-denominational Christian childcare center fully licensed by the state of Michigan. Our Midland childcare center has been serving the community since 2000. Please contact us at heavenselect.com.

Why Kids Need More Time Outside

In today’s digital age, children are spending more time than ever on screens and tablets, and less time exploring the outdoors and engaging with nature. However, early childhood research shows that spending time outside actually benefits children’s physical and mental development significantly! Here are a few key benefits of nurturing a healthy outdoor play schedule:

Emphasizes Physical Activity

Engaging in outdoor activities like sports, running, jumping, or climbing instills a healthy relationship with exercise early in life. Children not only are able to release their energy in healthy and productive ways, but also learn to take joy in moving their bodies and developing their gross motor skills. Encouraging outdoor play with your children at a young age empowers them to continue these healthy physical habits throughout their childhood and the rest of their lives!

Boosts Creativity

While the physical benefits of outdoor play may seem self-explanatory, there’s also significant evidence that outdoor play activates children’s creativity and innovation. Playing outside introduces children to different sensory experiences like new sounds, sights, and textures that allow them to develop more robust imaginations as they navigate these stimuli. These experiences then help to cultivate more creative play such as imaginary world building or crafting with natural materials.

Socialization Skills

Playgrounds and parks are a great way to engage in outdoor play with your child while also fostering their socialization skills. While interacting with other children in these environments, little ones develop key social skills like sharing, teamwork, friendship-building, and problem-solving. Navigating socialization freely outdoors can help teach your child crucial skills in independence and decision-making that can directly benefit their ability to interact with others!

As the weather steadily becomes warmer, now’s the perfect time to encourage children to engage in outdoor play as much as possible to best cultivate their physical, mental, and social wellbeing! Choosing a childcare center like Heaven’s Elect that incorporates outdoor play into children’s daily routines can be a key way to make the outdoors not only a regular part of your child’s day, but also a much-anticipated component of their schedule that gives them something to look forward to daily.

Heaven’s Elect Christian Learning Center is a Non-denominational Christian childcare center fully licensed by the state of Michigan. Our Midland childcare center has been serving the community since 2000. Please contact us at heavenselect.com.

Instilling Christian Values Through Childcare

Heaven’s Elect takes great pride in its identity as a Christian learning center and is truly committed to fostering little ones’ faith as much as their developmental milestones! As a spiritual family, it’s normal to seek out childcare centers that not only provide high-quality care and support for your child, but also cultivate a relationship with Jesus and the Christian faith.

Here at Heaven’s Elect, faith is infused throughout your child’s daily routine. While the beliefs of families and childcare participants may vary, staff at Heaven’s Elect make an effort to model Christian qualities like patience and understanding, all while teaching children skills rooted in the teachings of Jesus such as sharing, supporting friends in need, praying before meals, etc.

In the classroom, academic lessons are complemented by bible stories, prayers, and a faith-based curriculum that helps to ensure your child’s learning goes far beyond the basics to include an understanding of Christian values like compassion, forgiveness, kindness, and humility. This type of faith-based education helps to build a spiritual foundation that’s especially important in your child’s formative years!

Furthermore, Heaven’s Elect is equally passionate about partnering with parents and families to collaboratively nurture your child’s spiritual upbringing. Through active communication, meetings, and events, we help to ensure that your child’s time with us aligns with the Christian principles you care about most.

Choosing the right childcare center for your family is no easy decision, but there are numerous benefits of selecting an agency that prioritizes the same Christian values and virtues that you seek to cultivate in your own home. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Heaven’s Elect abides by this belief and seeks to support children’s spiritual wellbeing by providing a safe, accepting, and nurturing environment where they can learn new skills while growing in their relationship with God.

Heaven’s Elect Christian Learning Center is a Non-denominational Christian childcare center fully licensed by the state of Michigan. Our Midland childcare center has been serving the community since 2000. Please contact us at heavenselect.com.

First Steps in Learning: The Benefits of Infant Childcare

Whether you’re a first-time parent or have a few years of parenting under your belt, sending your infant to childcare can feel scary at first. However, infant childcare programs are specifically designed to cultivate your little one’s early developmental milestones, all while providing peace of mind to parents that your child is completely safe and cared for no matter their age.

One of the most critical benefits of utilizing infant childcare is that it provides a safe space for early learning skills. Through Heaven’s Elect’s infant programming, your little one can begin to learn basic hand signs to communicate, and can begin exploring colors, textures, and sounds. Through this process, children also begin to develop gross and fine motor skills that promote independence later in their growth.

Starting your child in childcare early also starts cultivating their socialization skills. Babies are naturally curious and social, and introducing them to other children early on can develop the building blocks little ones need to create positive and healthy peer relationships as they get older. Childcare provides a unique opportunity for this type of peer socialization that children may not normally experience at home.

Our team of teachers are also uniquely experienced with working with infants and specialize in helping to form caregiver bonds. Basic needs like food and sleep are provided in structured routines while your child can practice learning to trust their caretakers and meet their developmental milestones.

Entrusting your little one to a childcare center can be a big step, and it’s important to consider the unique needs of you and your family. However, choosing to utilize a trusted and experienced agency like Heaven’s Elect can make this process much smoother. Here, your child’s safety, development, and comfort are our top priority, and we value close communication with parents to ensure your family’s needs are being met.

Heaven’s Elect Christian Learning Center is a Non-denominational Christian childcare center fully licensed by the state of Michigan. Our Midland childcare center has been serving the community since 2000. Please contact us at heavenselect.com.