Nutrition

When children eat well, they have the nutrients and energy they need to grow and participate in sports.

 

Steps to Healthy Eating With Children

1. Eat meals with your family and use​ Canada's Food Guide to help you plan healthy meals that your family can eat together. 
2. Plan and pack healthy meals and snacks. Busy schedules make it essential to plan healthy meals.
3. Planning meals ahead of time helps to ensure you have all the ingredients to prepare a healthy meal in your allotted time frame.
4. Trust your child's appetite. Trust that your children know how much they need to eat.
5. Encourage children to listen and respond to their signals of hunger and fullness. During growth spurts, children may eat more. When they are growing slowly, they may eat less.
6. Create an environment that supports healthy eating. 
7. Stay fit through participation in fun activities.

Resources:

Health Canada - Canada's Food Guide

Dieticians of Canada Feeding Infants and Toddlers

With leadership and support from the BC Ministry of Health, Dietitians of Canada created focused messages and tips for parents on feeding infants and toddlers from 0-24 months.

Dieticians of Canada Raising Healthy Kids

Raising Our Healthy Kids is a series of short 60 – 90-second videos providing information to parents and care providers on healthy growth and development of children up to 12 years of age.

Injury Prevention

Children can avoid most injuries by wearing the appropriate protective gear and being properly supervised.

A few safety tips to consider: 

• Always assess the situation and risk involved; have the child wear appropriate protective equipment when required.
• In skiing and other locomotive sports, helmets can reduce the risk of head and face injuries. Click here for helmet fitting guidelines. 
• Wear knee, elbow and wrist guards for all sports that include a risk of falling, such as inline skating, skateboarding, cycling. 
• Wear shin pads for sports like hockey, softball, and soccer where injuries to the front of the lower leg are relatively common.
• A proper warm-up and cool down will help prevent injury and foster healthy habits.  
• Play other sports to ensure overall fitness and strength development.
• Use proper form and technique.
• Allow adequate recovery time between sessions.

Children can get easily cold when participating in outdoor activities. It is best to dress them in layers and take frequent breaks.

Check-in with the child to ensure they are warm throughout the day. Hand warmers, food snacks and hot chocolate help to keep children warm and happy while skiing.

Maintaining Balance

Raising active children in today's busy world can be challenging. Family time and being engaged with your children at this stage assists with creating the habit of being physically active for life.

Maintaining a balanced family life that fosters the development of healthy habits includes:

• Scheduling family time and activities where the family can be active together.
• Making sure everyone in the family has time for rest and regeneration.
• Finding a balance between sports and encouraging multi-sport exposure.
• Allowing for social "play" time with other children in a supervised but unstructured environment like the park playground.
• When children begin school, monitor the child’s response to ensure a right balance is maintained between physical activity and regeneration of mind and body. 
• Use the PLAYinventory form to record and track a child’s leisure-time activities throughout the year.
• Parents becoming involved through volunteer activities, when children begin to participate in a more structured sports program, at the child’s local club.