Parents: What are some of the things you do to prevent obesity if your children?

Is it about role modeling healthy behaviours? Is it about nutrition, limiting TV time, encouraging physical activity? Is it about working with their schools and teachers, finding out what they eat when they’re not at home?

Please mention the age of your children when writing your response and how difficult it is to convey certain messages, if at all…

My kids are young so they eat what we provide and I feel that in terms of nutrition, we do really well. I also know that kids aged 3 years and older should get 60 minutes a day of physical activity: structured and unstructured. I’ve talked to my toddler’s pre-school and had their staff trained (through my job) to bring more physical activity into their academic curricula and this summer we’re buying a swing/mountain/climbing playgroud for the kids to move around more outside…same goes for buying more scooters, bicycles and just last week, I got a couple of crawl through tunnels which seems to encourage more movement…There is also VERY limited TV time, maybe, if at all, 5 minutes a day of cartoons and there’s no TV in the pre-school which was important to us…I understand that as they grow older, outside influences will matters more than parental ones, but how have you managed to encourage healthy eating and physical activity in your children?