Building a Healthy Family

Each family can be regarded as a unique small-scale society, with its own internal organisation and view of the world or family culture. A crucial aspect of each family culture are those beliefs, behaviours, habits, and lifestyles that are protective of health and wellbeing. Family health values, beliefs, and priorities are established through family traditions and culture and are dependent on resources available to support healthy living.

However, family wellness is not just about individual health. It’s about the health and well-being of the entire family. This starts with you and your spouse, but it also includes your children, parents, grandparents, and other family members. To help you get started on building a healthy family, here are some tips that can really make a difference.

1. Have a family meeting to discuss what foods will be eaten and what won’t be eaten. This is important because you don’t want lots of food temptations around the house that will only lead to overindulgence and unhealthy weight gain. This discussion can also help with preparing the shopping list and weekly grocery shop.
2. Sit down to eat together as a family without the T.V or phones. Without technology, communication allows for a deeper connection with one another.
3. Take on one new healthy habit a month as a family. For example, taking a walk for 60 minutes once a week together or drinking more water.
4. Practice good sleep hygiene which entails using the bed only for sleep and going into bed to sleep at the same time every day.
5. Rejuvenate regularly together as a family. Being able to generate positive emotion through laughing together, doing physical exercise, playing board games and other activities will grow your connection. It’s also important to rejuvenate regularly because you can’t be there for your family if your tank is always on empty.

With the 5 tips above, together you and your family will ultimately build on your family resilience which is your family’s ability to withstand and rebound from disruptive life challenges, strengthened and more resourceful. Resilient families are able to better face life’s stresses and adjust in healthy ways to life’s challenges. For this reason, supporting the resilience of families during periods of stress can help maintain and improve the health and wellbeing of the family. If you find any of these tips helpful, I’d love to know what you started to implement by commenting below.