3 Essential Tips For Helping Your Tween or Teen Make Good Decisions
Updated December 2023
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When your children are young, it's easy to oversee the choices they make. Helping them lead a healthy lifestyle is less challenging; as a parent, you have more control over the foods young children eat, when they go to bed, and when they go outside to play. As your children grow, however, helping them make beneficial choices becomes a little more complicated.
You can help your tween or teen make good health decisions by exercising with them, talking about damaging habits like smoking, and helping them plan for the future.
Tweens and teens spend more time outside of your direct supervision and make choices on their own. You can still influence their decisions, though, even when they are away. Read on for ideas on how to teach your children the value of healthy options that can stay with them for a lifetime.
Exercise With Your Children
If you want your kids to get exercise, you can encourage them by developing your workout plan and staying active, too. Go for a family walk after dinner or spend a Saturday afternoon riding bikes.
If you have a gym membership, older kids and teenagers may enjoy trying new exercise equipment (affiliate link) with you. If not, you can exercise easily in the comfort of your home with our list of recommended at-home workout equipment (affiliate link)!
Even if you aren't directly participating in exercise with your children, you can support the activities they choose. You can attend their games or dance recitals and talk to them about what they enjoy most. If your child prefers activities outside of school sports, there are many options. Hiking, bowling, or horseback riding are great ways to stay active.
Taekwondo offers many benefits, both physical and mental. This martial art uses muscles in the upper and lower body and gets kids moving in fun and energizing ways — such as by breaking boards. It also teaches children discipline and skill mastery, and as they progress, their self-confidence increases. Teens learn to better sharpen their focus, a skill that carries over into schoolwork and, later, into their jobs. There's no need for you to stay on the sidelines, though. You can consider taking Taekwondo along with your child and build your skills, too.
Talk About Smoking
According to a study by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center, adolescents who smoke tobacco are more likely to use alcohol, smokeless tobacco, and illegal drugs. Start talking to your children when they are young about the bad things smoking does to their bodies. Explain that other forms of tobacco can cause health problems, too. Help them come up with ways they can resist peer pressure if someone offers them a cigarette.
Leading by example is a very effective way to deter your children from smoking. If you smoke, quit. Your children can benefit from seeing you stop the habit with help from your doctor or through a smoking cessation program.
Plan For the Future
Even if your children are years away from college, it's not too early to plan for their future. Talk to them about their interests and how they can lead to a career. If there are school subjects your children particularly enjoy, those skills can help shape their outlook.
Your children can benefit from watching you lead by example and work toward your goals. If you have always wanted to start a business, you can earn an online degree while learning about marketing, accounting, and business management. Maybe you've always wanted to study web design. There's no better time than the present to begin work on your degree, learning more about the theory of design and how to build attractive, easy-to-use sites.
One of the significant challenges of parenting is letting children make their own decisions as they grow. With your guidance, they can learn how to make wise choices that benefit their lives.
