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Personal Hygiene for Kids: Best Habits & Tips to Keep Your Child Healthy
Teaching children as they grow is a very engaging and challenging process. Those tiny little hands are always reaching out for everything they can grab and this may not always be a good sign. Some of the things that they come in contact with like mud, door handles and food from outside can be unhygienic and could pose problems in the form of transmittable diseases.
Inculcating healthy habits from a young age is important to ensure that your children remain safe and healthy.
Video: Personal Hygiene for Kids - Best Habits Tips to Keep a Child Healthy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WykQ6x5__Pc
Why is Personal Hygiene Important for Kids?
Following proper health and hygiene practices for and by children is extremely crucial and helps in keeping germs and diseases at a bay. Whenever they touch dusty areas, deadly microorganisms can transfer onto their hands, food and eventually into their stomach and cause diseases.
Certain habits can be practised as a foundation to ensure health and hygiene for kids. The best way to get your child to understand this is by teaching them ways to practice from an early stage. Read about some common practices that help in inculcating the best personal hygiene practices in children:
13 Best Healthy Personal Hygiene Habits for Children
1. Food Hygiene for Kids
Unhealthy food habits can cause food poisoning and lead to conditions like diarrhoea, vomiting, or stomach pains. As a parent, you need to ensure hygiene is intact when preparing, serving, or feeding food to your child.
When teaching your child about food hygiene, start with the basics and tell him/her about the germs and bacteria that cause diseases. Let them understand how these can infect their bodies and spread from their hands to their food and into their bodies.
Washing hands: Make sure your child knows how to wash his/her hands thoroughly with soap before and after eating and also provide them with a clean wiping cloth to wipe their hands. The cloth should be washed/changed frequently.
Food Storage: Healthy food habits also include proper storage. Teach your child how to segregate and store food in the refrigerator and also tell them about the ones that can be left outside. Don’t leave any food uncovered and also keep the lids clean to avoid contracting bacteria.
Cooking Food: If you’re the one doing most of the cooking, make it a habit to follow proper hygiene practices.
Always use an apron and tie your hair.
Roll your sleeves up to avoid having grease or stains on your clothes.
Don’t cough or sneeze into the food, always turn away whenever you have to so as to avoid the food from getting contaminated with germs. Sanitize/wash your hands thoroughly before touching the food again.
2. Hand Hygiene for Kids
Washing hands frequently can reduce the chances of contracting diseases such as diarrhoea. The simplest way to practise hand hygiene is by teaching your child how to wash hands thoroughly. Show your child a step by step demonstration on how to wash hands and ensure they get all the steps right.
Wet your hands with water.
Apply soap to your hands and rub to form a lather.
Make sure that your child cleans even in between the fingers and under the nails.
Wash the soap away entirely with clean water.
A good hygiene for kids includes keeping his/her hands clean at all times. Let your child form a habit of washing their hands every time they:
Use the bathroom
Play outside
Clean the house
Touch an animal
Meet a sick friend
Sneeze or a cough
Before and after eating their food
3. Sleep Hygiene for Children
Sleep is extremely important for children and adults alike as the body uses this time to regenerate its cells and record memories. Sleep hygiene includes everything that helps your child get a good night’s sleep. It helps you create an ‘awake during the day and resting during the night' pattern for your child to fit in enough sleep at night so they can remain active during the day. You can also teach them the importance of sleep to get them more interested in learning its benefits.
As growing children, they will need to rest for at least 10 hours in a day. Following are a few ways in which you can inculcate good sleeping habits in your child:
Avoid letting your child fall asleep at odd hours during the day so that they sleep well at night.
The bed should only be used for sleeping and not for watching TV or doing homework.
Create a relaxed environment. You can have dim lights that let your child rest. You can also try singing a lullaby.
Keep gadgets and alarms away from children to avoid waking them.
Put your child to bed every day at a fixed time.
4. Vocal Hygiene for Children
These are a set of methods you and your child can use to help him/her get a modulated voice. Most children can develop a habit of shouting a lot. If they aren’t given attention and are ignored; your child’s vocal cords can experience excessive stress and get damaged.
Keep your child hydrated and give him/her enough water to drink every day.
Avoid giving them cold drinks or ice creams.
Encourage your child to speak in one tone during a conversation.
Kids can sometimes clear their throat, affecting the way they sound. Always discourage them from doing so.
Keep them from shouting or whispering too much.
5. Oral Hygiene
It is also important that you take care of your child’s mouth and teeth. Without proper care, your child can develop cavities, bad breath, and other oral diseases. Although baby teeth fall out eventually, they play a major role in aiding in eating and in speech development. So, here are some ways you can keep your child’s teeth healthy:
Make sure that your child brushes at least two times a day.
Always use a child’s toothbrush as they’re smaller and also soft on the developing gums of your child.
In the first 12 months, only wipe the child’s gums with a clean cloth. When the first set of teeth appear, wipe the surface gently with a toothbrush and some water.
Let your child start using toothpaste when they are around two years old.
Sweet food shouldn’t be left to linger around the teeth for too long as it can cause cavities.
If the child has wiggly teeth by the age of 6, let him/her wiggle the tooth so that it falls off without much pain or bleeding.
6. Dental Hygiene
You know that it is important to brush your child’s teeth to keep them healthy. But few know the right way of brushing their teeth. Here are some ways you can keep your child’s teeth healthy. In the beginning, brush their teeth with this method yourself and slowly teach them the right way to do it.
Keep the brush angled at 45 degrees to your child’s gums.
Move the brush back and forth gently.
Brush all the surfaces of your child’s teeth (outer, inner and chewing areas).
To clean the inner surface thoroughly, you can hold the brush vertically and move it up and down.
Brush the tongue to remove any bacteria.
You can also include the usage of a dental floss to ensure that your child stays away from cavities.
Take about 18 inches of floss and wrap both ends of it on either of your middle fingers.
Hold the floss between your thumb and forefingers and insert the floss inside your child’s teeth.
While holding the floss in a C-shape, gently rub the floss while keeping it pressed against the tooth.
Make sure that you floss all the teeth and get the jaw teeth too.
7. Kids’ Hair Care
Poor hair hygiene in your child can cause problems like dandruff, lice, and other infections in the scalp. Your child can get these when playing with his/her friends in the playground or even contract it from another child in his surrounding. To avoid these infections, your child should be taught to take care of his/her hair and scalp.
Wash your child’s hair at least two times in a week to keep the hair grease and dirt free.
Assist your child on how to wash the scalp thoroughly with shampoo and rinse with water.
If your child has head lice, make sure you treat it immediately.
If your child has long hair, encourage her to keep the hair tied up mostly to avoid them from getting dirty.
Teach your child to avoid sharing his/her comb, pillow, and hats too with other children.
8. Nail Hygiene
Children’s nails accumulate a lot of dirt and microbes as they often play outside and in the sand, mud or simply dirty grounds Children and adults alike use their limbs extensively which causes nails to get injured or contaminated.
Kids tend to bite their nails. Discourage them from doing so as they can end up ingesting the microbes present under their nails.
Cut your child’s nails frequently.
Teach your child to scrub and wash under his/her nails thoroughly to ensure that they are clean at all times.
Help your child to wash his/her hands after every time they pet an animal, play outside, cough or sneeze, and before and after eating.
Also pay attention to your child’s toe nails, and cut them regularly.
9. Bathing Hygiene
The best way to keep your child clean and healthy at all times is by giving them a bath regularly. Some bath hygiene habits include,
Teach your child to bathe twice in a day- before they go to school and after they come back.
Encourage him/her to scrub the different parts of the body like the armpits, groin, legs, and feet.
Ensure that they apply soap every time they take a shower.
Keep an eye to see that your child takes extra care when cleaning his/her face as the skin is more delicate here.
10. Foot Hygiene
When bacteria acts along with sweat on your child’s feet, they can get smelly. This happens if your child wears shoes all day, especially without socks. This causes a lot of dirt and bacteria to get accumulated on your child’s feet. Some personal hygiene habits for kids can help keep these smelly feet away:
Ensure that your child washes his/her feet every time they take a bath.
Keep the feet clean by scrubbing them properly with soap and rinsing off with water properly.
Always clean in between the toes, on the underside of the foot, and also under the toenails to keep microbes away.
Teach your child to keep his/her footwear clean to avoid contracting germs.
Use a moisturiser to keep the feet soft at all times.
11. Toileting Hygiene
The bathroom or the toilet is one of the places in the house that contain the maximum germs. As long as you keep the bathroom clean and teach your child the right toileting hygiene, you can avoid all bathroom borne diseases.
Teach your child to wipe or wash after every time they go potty.
Teach them how to flush on their own.
Remind them to wash their hands every time they use the bathroom.
A good way to help them learn is by staying with them and guiding them through the whole process. Also, have your child look at the wipe every time they wipe after potty.
12. Coughing and Sneezing Hygiene
You can’t always protect your child, and a few illnesses here and there can actually help improve immunity; so there is an upside to illnesses too. Sometimes your child can get infected with a common cough or a cold.
Prevent your child from spreading infections by teaching him/her how to sneeze or cough by covering their mouth.
Also, instead of using their hands, encourage your kids to use their sleeve or elbow instead. This avoids the spreading of the germs from their hands.
Whenever they do use their sleeve, praise them subtly like “I saw that you used your sleeve. Thank you for doing that”. This will let them remember to do this again in the future.
13. Home Hygiene
Apart from all types of hygiene mentioned above, your child should also follow some hygiene at home as this can also build up as your child's etiquette.
Teach your child to wear clean clothes every day. If your child likes a particular dress, teach him/her to wear it only when it is clean.
Inculcate the habit of cleanliness.
Teach them to pick up their dish after eating and put it in the sink and also wash their hands after.
If your child spills something in the house, teach them to clean it. If they’re too young to do so, help them clean it.
Tips to Teach Your Kids Personal Hygiene
You can’t teach your child all of the child hygiene habits mentioned above overnight. Teaching personal hygiene habits to kids will require patience. Some accidents might happen here and there, but avoid scolding your child as they are still learning. Here are some tips to follow when teaching your child about hygiene:
Explain the difference: Start by explaining about all the good and bad habits. You can start with something your child already knows.
Tell them the reason: Make them understand why they should maintain good hygiene and the reason behind why something is good or bad.
Praise and encourage: Praise them when they do something good. It can be as simple as washing their hands or sneezing into their sleeve.
Start with the basics: Have your child wash their hands first and then move onto bigger things like brushing, bathing, food hygiene, etc.
Set an example: Children learn by looking at you, so give them a demonstration. Show them the right way to do something so that they learn faster.
Educate them: Tell them about the different kinds of germs and microbes that cause diseases. Tell them about the things that happen if they get these germs in their bodies.
Make the learning more fun for them: This way they can remember better. Try including games and other fun activities whenever you teach them about hygiene.
Several times you might have to leave your child or be too busy to monitor them. Teaching your child about hygiene can help them take care of themselves even when you’re not with them. Read more
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Eating Corn Flakes during Pregnancy
Are corn flakes good during pregnancy? There is no right answer. There are both good and bad effects of eating corn flakes during pregnancy.
Why to Eat Corn Flakes during Pregnancy?
Cornflakes help you feel fresh throughout the day. This is because corn flakes are rich in complex carbohydrates and provide energy.
Cornflakes are also rich in riboflavin, thiamine, iron, dietary fibre and niacin that makes it a wholesome food.
Benefits of Eating Cornflakes in Pregnancy
Cornflakes are said to be rich in dietary fibre, and these fibres are considered to be good for pregnancy. Here are some advantages of eating cornflakes during pregnancy.
Dietary fibre helps in reducing the blood pressure and control the issues of constipation.
One average bowl of corn flakes contains about 25 grams of fibre. You can control most of the issues related to pregnancy when you consume a meal rich in dietary fibre.
Consuming one bowl of corn flakes daily can help in reducing the risks of preeclampsia that is triggered by high blood pressure. It can cause severe issues for your developing foetus if not taken care of.
When you consume a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast, your stomach gets filled with dietary fibre, and it satisfies your hunger as well.
Consuming corn flakes also helps in controlling weight during pregnancy.
Adverse Effects of Eating Corn Flakes when Pregnant
Eating excess of corn flakes can cause some problems for pregnancy. Here is a list of some negative effects of eating corn flakes during pregnancy:
The corn flakes which are commercially available are rich in fat, salt and sugar which are unhealthy for pregnancy when eaten in excess.
Cornflakes may result in issues like flatulence, intestinal gas, abdominal pain and bloated feeling. The capability of your body to absorb zinc, iron and minerals decreases when you eat corn flakes in excess.
Cornflakes with grains are usually acidic in nature, hence causing an acidic state in the tissues and blood.
Compared to sprouts, fruits and vegetables, it is harder to eat grains in corn flakes.
The conditions may exacerbate further if you eat corn flakes if you have irritable bowel syndrome.
Tips to Keep in Mind
If you love to eat corn flakes for breakfast, include them in your diet. Just make sure that you eat them in moderation.
Avoid eating corn flakes that contain artificial sweeteners or artificially flavoured corns.
You can add natural sweeteners such as strawberries or honey to enhance the taste of your meal.
Feel free to consult a nutritionist before you make any changes to your diet plan. Also, discuss your food habits and cravings.
Always add warm milk to the cornflakes because dry corn flakes might make you feel nauseated.
Try to have corn flakes only for breakfast and not during other meals.
Eating cornflakes will do you no harm in pregnancy if you eat it in moderation. Cornflakes without any artificial ingredient can actually be healthy for pregnancy. But don’t forget to follow the tips if you are going to add corn flakes to your diet.
Also Read:
Healthy Breakfast during Pregnancy
Eating Oats during Pregnancy Read more
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How Toddlers Use Objects To Cope With Separation
Parents think that playing with educative toys is the only way to quicken child development. On the contrary, studies have proved that stuffed toys work better. Stuffed animals help toddlers to cope with separation and improve their social and communication skills. Find out how.
As a dutiful parent, you're bound to have done your research well and lined your toddler's nursery with the best educative toys that would help him in enhancing different skills. However, don't forget to add in a stuffed animal or too. These toys aren't just cuddly but prove beneficial in child development.
Stuffed Animals and Child Development- How this Works
1. Learning to be Independent
Your tot hardly leaves your side during the course ofthe day. However, in order for him to learn more about his surroundings, he needs to explore. But, leaving your side might be just unthinkable for the little one and even scary at times. A stuffed animal can actually help in overcoming this separation anxiety in toddlers. Start by presenting your child with a stuffed toy of his favourite animal or cartoon. Suggest him to name the toy and address it with that name. Now, encourage your tot to play with the toy for some time on his own. This will get the tot attached to the toy and think of it as a playmate, thus reducing his fear of venturing away from you.
2. Expressing Emotions
Toddlers often find it hard to express their emotions to their parents. However, a stuffed toy in tow not only acts as a playmate but also dons the role of a confidant. Your child is more likely to talk about his fear of leaving your side to his stuffed toy rather than to you. You might see your tot consoling his stuffed animal about it being okay. Keeping an eye on this will help you understand your child's insecurities and fear of separation. Make sure that you teach your toddler how to help themselves to cope with separations.
3. Regulating Emotions
Regulating emotions doesn't come easily and needs a lot of practice. This is especially true when it comes to fear of separation in toddlers. When your little one pretend plays with his stuffed animals, he actually learns the right way to manage his emotions and direct them the right way. These games also help him in coming up with solutions that can help him to cope with his fear of being separated from you for some time.
4. Gaining Confidence
One of the main reasons why 3-years-old love stuffed animals is because the company of the toy makes him feel safe and even confident. When it comes to playing with the toy, he dons the role of a protector to the doll, just as you do for him. He realises that fear can't make its presence felt in such a situation and thus ventures around with confidence.
Playing with stuffed toys also enhances the sense of object permanence in your baby. Thus, he knows that even if he isn't able to see you, you are still around. This, in turn, helps him to get over his separation anxiety. Read more
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Never Feed Your Cute N Lovely Baby Forcefully Just Play With Them While Feeding
Your baby is special to you, and you want to give them the best of everything whether it is related to the environment, clothing, sleeping or nutrition. We mothers want to make our children healthy and happy. To make them healthy and strong, we force our babies to eat different types of food.
This makes them uneasy and upset. In this way, we can give him nutrition while forcing but they won't be happy or like eating. So play with them and make them feel comfortable and let them chew their food slowly at their own pace. This is a great and easy way to make your baby healthy and happy.
Always remember, your baby gets quickly bored with the same food every day, so make sure to give lots of choice of meals to the baby which they love. For example, add some green veggies to soup or make some vegetables stuffed parathas. You can add some vegetables to idli. You can add winter veggies to upma n poha also. Try to make different shapes and sizes of rotis like a flower, triangle, square which creates interest in food . This is the best way to give your baby full nutritional valued food every day. Along with this give your baby a sufficient amount of liquid which keeps them hydrated and healthy in terms of water, juice and all. The most important thing to remember is that never give your baby overnight made food or prolonged cooked food. Just serve them fresh foods all the time.Never hurry up to finish feeding your child, allow them to eat slowly and enjoy their food. Your lil baby always wants your love and care. So spend lots of quality time by playing with them, sleeping with them and so on. Our baby is the best gift to us by God. So give them your best. I hope this is a helpful article for all loving moms.
Disclaimer: The views, opinions and positions (including content in any form) expressed within this post are those of the author alone. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The responsibility for intellectual property rights of this content rests with the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with him/her. Read more
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Guardian of 0 children
5 hours ago
Q. In my growth scan doctor found that 2 round cord has been partly around baby necks. Is there any problem with this. will I get normal delivery?
Dr Priyanka Kalra
Obstetrician and Gynaecologist
51 mins ago
A. better cesarean. better to show to specialist always as they get the correct diagnosis. try to avoid self and extra medication that will only complicate this and create more damage to the child
Dr Ghouse has added a new answer
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Q. I m preganant in 5 month in twin baby. Last lmp is 22/12/2023. my expected due date
Dr Ghouse
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2 hours ago
A. 29.9.24. if there is no relief it is better you see your doctor for proper examination particularly physical examination if there is need for doing investigations to find out the problem and treatment ok
Sunita Mahato has added a new answer
Mom of a 1 m old child
3 hours ago
Q. #asktheexperts How to increase quantity of milk production?
Sunita Mahato
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A. to increase milk take latction supplement as lactare...
take green papaya bottle gourd bitter gourd fennel seeds garlic oats ragi dalia sabudana ...
regular pumping increase milk use Babyhug electric breast pump...
Dr Ghouse has added a new answer
Expecting Mom due in 4 months
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Q. hi doctor from two days i am eating milk cream with sugar and i want to burn it in my stomach I am 5 month pregnant plzz help ??
Dr Ghouse
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A. at present weight no exercise is other than moderate walking. if there is no relief it is better you see your doctor for proper examination particularly physical examination if there is need for doing investigations to find out the problem and treatment ok
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Q. I am in my 8th month of pregnancy (last week), and for some reason I am continously facing lot of fatigue. I am feeling deprived of energy and I don't have any energy to do anything. resting isn't Helping in any way and taking small walks isn't too. what can be the possible reason and how to overcome this.
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A. yes that can be both physical and psychological problems during pregnancy ok. if there is no relief it is better you see your doctor for proper examination particularly physical examination if there is need for doing investigations to find out the problem and treatment ok
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Q. hi,
pls advice , after hcg tigger injection can we do intercourse to conceive and till when we can do ...trying to conceive
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A. Hello dear! We understand your eagerness and concern. It is advisable to check with your consulting doctor regarding this matter. Clarify your concerns and follow your doctor’s advice. Maintain a good personal hygiene routine and a healthy lifestyle
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