Most of our children’s habits are acquired, as they can acquire them from different sources, like family, friends, and their neighbors as well. But still the most common source from where the child can get most of his habits is his mother. Of course part of these habits is the eating habits, with its two parts the healthy and the wrong ones.

In this article, we will talk briefly about the mother’s eating habits, and the effect of these habits on the eating habits of her children. We will talk about the wrong eating habits of mother’s, and how your child can get it. We will give you a brief summary and examples about the Healthy eating habits for mother’s and how her children can get it as well.

How can the mother’s eating habits affect her child’s eating habits?

The mother’s eating habits can affect her child’s eating habits, either directly through direct learning from the mother, or indirectly through indirect observation of the mother while doing this habit. The child can get a lot of habits from his mother through direct or indirect ways, as he can become a healthy eater or unhealthy eater through these ways. Examples of these habits can be the daily eating of fruits and vegetables, or getting breakfast daily. The child may not be able to get any other habits rather than his mother’s ones, even with her trying to accustom him to new healthy habits.

What are the wrong eating habits of mother’s?

Mothers usually do a lot of wrong habits even when they do not mean to. Of course their children can imitate them without meaning to as well. We will give you examples of wrong eating habits of mother’s that can be intentionally or non-intentionally transferred to their children.

• Skipping breakfast, or delaying it until late in the day.
• Eating unhealthy breakfast that can contain a high amount of carbohydrates and simple sugar, or lack the essential vitamins and minerals.
• Depending on eating unhealthy snacks, like fries, sweets, and bakeries.
• Delaying the dinner meal.
• Eating carbohydrates and sugar in high amounts.
• Drinking a lot of caffeine-containing drinks, like coffee and tea.
• Not eating vegetables and fruits, or eating them in small and insufficient quantities.
• Eating food, especially unhealthy food late at night.
• Eating a lot of processed meat.

What are the healthy eating habits for mother’s?

Of course mothers can have healthy eating as well, and of course every mother will try to learn these healthy eating habits to their children, either directly through forcing them to do these habits, or indirectly through observation of the children to their mothers. We will discuss with you some examples about healthy eating habits for mother’s as follows:

• Keeping the daily habit of eating a healthy breakfast, that contains the essential elements like calcium, iron, and vitamins required for healthy life, healthy build up of the body, and protection of the child’s body from diseases. This can be the most important one of the mother’s eating habits, that need to be transferred to children.
• Commit to daily meal times as much as possible. It is one of the mother’s eating habits that can prevent obesity.
• Keeping the daily habit of eating healthy snacks like vegetables and fruits, and healthy grains like oats.
• Drinking coffee and tea in appropriate amounts. The mother must also take into account the appropriate age to introduce caffeine into the child’s diet, as the child’s age when he begins drinking caffeine must not be less than 12 years.
• Eating sugar and carbohydrates in appropriate amounts.
• Keeping the healthy habit of eating vegetables and fruits to keep the required amount of vitamins, to maintain a healthy body and save the body from diseases.
• Eating carbohydrates and sugar in appropriate amounts only.
• Eating processed meat and meat products in appropriate amounts, as it contains a lot of unhealthy products like monosodium glutamate, and produces colors as well. These healthy eating habits for mother’s can be one of the most important habits.

What are the healthy eating habits for children?

There are a lot of habits that can be classified as healthy habits, they can be done either by mothers or be transferred to their children and mothers have to try to help their children to learn these good habits, to maintain their healthy eating and healthy life. Some of these healthy eating habits are as follows:

• Eating a healthy breakfast daily, contains calcium in milk and eggs, iron in dates and leafy vegetables,compound carbohydrates in different grains like oats that can preserve satiety for a long time, and give the body its required energy, and finally contains vitamins in vegetables and fruits. It is one of the most important mother’s eating habits that can transfer to children.
• Keeping the healthy habit of drinking enough water. Children usually forget to drink water or may replace it with sweet drinks like juices. 
• Eating the dinner meal at an early time, to prevent obesity, and affections to teeth.
• Eating simple carbohydrates and sugar in appropriate amounts to avoid obesity, that can lead to diabetes in some cases.
• Eating adequate amounts of vegetables and fruits regularly, and including them in snacks and main meals as well.
• Drinking caffeine only when reaching the health allowed age, which is estimated by 12 years old.
• Eating dinner as early as possible in the night, and avoid eating food, especially sweets, carbohydrates and fats late at night, to avoid obesity, and consequently diabetes. It is one of the mother’s eating habits that can transfer to children, and stay with them all their lifetime.

What are the wrong eating habits for children?

Children have a wide range of wrong eating habits that can be developed from their mothers, and can be developed from any person in their surroundings, and with the presence of these habits, we need to mention some of them to be well considered. There are some of these habits that belong to children only, some of these habits are as follows:

• Excessive intake of sugars, as children tend to eat sweets in large quantities, which may contain many different harmful substances, in addition to causing obesity. Many sweets may contain artificial colors as well, which cause various harms to the children, in addition to causing diabetes. The artificial colors that some types of sugars may contain can cause various problems in the liver and kidneys as well. This eating habit is considered one of the habits specific to children.
• Reduce drinking water, or replace water with juices, as children usually replace drinking water with drinking juices, which may contain large amounts of sugar, which may cause tooth decay in children, and may also cause obesity,
• Neglecting breakfast is one of the most important wrong eating habits that children may become accustomed to, the main source of which is the mother, whether directly through her lack of interest in accustoming her child to eating breakfast, or indirectly through the mother’s lack of interest in eating this meal, which insists the child to believe that this meal is not important, as this is one of the most widespread customs among children of all ages, and it is also one of the most influential matters on the child’s health, whether in childhood or at different age stages.
• Eating fried foods is one of the most wrong health and nutritional habits that children may do at different ages. As all children prefer to eat all kinds of fried foods, such as French fries, and others, which have many harmful effects, such as causing the child to become obese and many other health problems. The child also acquires the habit of eating fried food to a large extent, which leads to the child continuing this habit when he grows up, which may lead to various heart and arterial problems. It is one of the mother’s eating habits that children need to avoid.

What are the habits that can children get from their mothers?

Children can acquire many different eating habits, whether they are healthy eating habits of mothers, or wrong eating habits of mothers. 

Children can acquire the habit of eating vegetables and fruits through their mothers, and it is considered one of the most important eating habits of the mother that the child can acquire through his mother either through observation indirectly or by teaching and accustoming by the mother, whether during main meals or as snacks. It is one of the most common habits from the mother’s eating habits that can be acquired by the child.

It is also considered one of the most important nutritional habits for the mother, the habit of eating meals at specific times, as the mothers’ regularity in eating meals at specific times helps the child to eat meals regularly, as well as the child’s regularity in eating breakfast, which is one of the most important meals that he should eat. The child must eat her meals regularly at a specific time. 

Regular meal times also help reduce the incidence of obesity, and also help the child feel hungry at the specific times for meals. The mother’s regularity in eating these meals at a specific time helps with regularity and accustoms the child to eating meals at a specific time,  and feeling hungry at specific times as well. This habit from the mother’s eating habits can accustom the child to specific eating times, and prevent obesity due to late time eating.

The child needs to get a balanced breakfast, which contains all the nutritional elements that the child needs. This habit is also one of the most important nutritional habits for the mother that the child can get used to in several ways, either by watching his mother daily, and this is at the beginning of the child learning to eat food, but as the child learns to eat, he will learn this habit from his mother directly by accustoming the child to eating healthy food at breakfast, which contains all the healthy ingredients that we mentioned previously.

What are the targets of keeping and getting healthy eating habits?

Of course you are asking, why do we need to make healthy eating habits, and refuse the wrong eating habits? And why do we need to keep trying to make the children get these healthy habits? We will give you the answer to this question in these few letters.

• Children need to develop and keed healthy eating habits to get a healthy body, healthy build up and strong immunity which can stay with children during their lifetime. Keep in mind that all healthy habits your children may get will stay with them all their lifelong.
• Children need to develop and keed healthy eating habits to prevent anemia. A lot of children may get anemia due to different reasons, like affection with anemia from his mother during pregnancy, or due to poor nutrition after birth, especially during the first 3 months. Of course healthy eating habits can prevent anemia through keeping the child on healthy eating habits or through iron containing supplements.
• Children need to develop and keed healthy eating habits to prevent the occurrence of different nutritional and health problems that may occur due to vitamin deficiency. Vitamin deficiency may cause different diseases like anemia, general weakness, hair fall, fall in the general immune status and many other diseases that may occur due to low vitamin intake.
• Children need to develop and keed healthy eating habits to avoid obesity that may lead to diabetes in a lot of cases. The most common cause of obesity is the wrong eating habits, and consequently the healthy eating habits will help you avoid obesity and prevent diabetes. Healthy eating habits that can prevent diabetes like low intake of simple carbohydrates like sweets, bakeries and fried foods, which can lead to obesity with different degrees.
• Children need to develop and keed healthy eating habits to prevent getting kidney and liver diseases. Unhealthy food may contain a lot of harmful substances that can cause harm to the kidney and liver in a lot of cases, and may lead to cancer in many cases. 

Children need to develop healthy eating and nutritional habits to get a healthy body, and healthy growth that can maintain a healthy life for them. So, we need to stay alert with the mother’s eating habits, that can be learned by her children.

Can children get habits from any person rather than his mothers?

Of course you may ask yourself a question, if the mother is the only person who can give their habits to their children? The answer is no, of course not. Children can get their habits from everyone in their surrounding, like their fathers, their grandparents, their neighbors, or their friends in the kindergarten. They can be affected by older children especially, as they can have a greater effect on their habits. Here comes the role of parents to prevent the bad effect of the surrounding environment on their children, and prevent the effect of their friends on their eating habits.

Conclusion

All children need to get appropriate and balanced growth, a healthy and disease free body as well, but these goals can not be easily achieved. Some diseases and nutritional problems may stay with the child all his life long or to different age groups as well, which force every mother to develop good eating habits with their children, to protect them from all these dangers. The first step for the healthy present and future is to develop healthy eating habits.

Developing healthy eating habits for mothers is the first step for developing these habits for children, and helping them get the best healthy life. Mothers can accustom their children to a healthy lifestyle, and healthy eating habits such as making a schedule for eating meals, regular eating of vegetables and fruits, and getting breakfast everyday. All these healthy habits can help children get a balanced good growth, and good lifelong health.