family time Archives - Have Sippy Will Travel

Making Family Meals Simple

When you have children, you’re going to find that you take on a whole lot more responsibility than when you were only catering to your own needs or your own and your partner’s needs. You suddenly become entirely responsible for another person’s happiness, health and wellbeing. This means that you’re going to find yourself focusing on all sorts of areas that can help your little one to lead a better life. You’ll spend time understanding parenting methods. You’ll spend time looking into good schools for their education. You can take time to make sure that they’re attending healthcare appointments like vaccines, dental checkups and more. You can ensure you’re helping them to invest themselves in hobbies and social activities. The list goes on. But one key area that you have to focus on is their diet. All people, including kids, need to enjoy a healthy balanced diet, but many parents find that they struggle for time when it comes to delivering on this front. Here are some suggestions that can make family mealtimes as simple and straightforward as possible.

Meal Planning

The first step towards making family meal times good and healthy is to take time meal planning. When you have a clear idea of what meals you’re going to enjoy throughout the week, the more likely you are to stick to the healthy meals you had in mind. All too often we turn to convenience food for – well, the sake of convenience. The issue is that convenience foods are often nutritional void and may contain excess salts and sugars. Meal planning doesn’t have to mean coming up with difficult to make options. Keep things simple, but keep them balanced. You may be able to find inspiration from recipes like Bacon Wrapped Smoked Pork Tenderloin. There are plenty of options out there and you’re bound to find a few favorites that will become a more regular part of your routine.

Meal Prepping

It’s all good and well having a meal plan in place, but many people will still fall off the wagon here. They’ll have good intentions, but won’t actually follow through with them. You can help to keep things on track with meal prepping. Meal prepping is when you collect and partially prepare your meals ahead of time. This means that no matter how busy you may be, or how little time you may feel you have on your hands, you will be able to put together healthy meals with minimal effort and time involved. Look at what elements of each meal you can prepare beforehand. This could be chopping vegetables, marinating meat or anything else. You may even want to fully prepare meals that can then be frozen or stored in tupperware for heating up at a later date.

Hopefully, some of the information and ideas above will help you to create healthier and more wholesome meals with less effort. Give them a try and see how you get on with them.

The 3 Components of the Right Home Environment for Our Children

spending time with kids

Home is where the heart is, and it’s so vital for us to provide the right environment for our children. But as parents, we can find ourselves bound by financial constrictions, so if we want to give our children a home that supports them in the right ways we’ve got to think laterally. But it doesn’t have to be expensive- let’s show you some of the basics in how you can give your children the essentials in the right home environment.

The Physical Space

Many people think that if they want to create a nurturing home for their children, they are better off saving up for a massive home or trying to build one. And you may have thought about the latter and asked yourself how long does it take to build a home, but you need to remember that the right physical environment is not necessarily one with lots of space. A nurturing physical environment is one where you are accessible to your children. It sounds simple, but if you have a home that is full of nooks and crannies where you can hide away, are your children going to feel that you are not there for them? At the same time, you need to give them their own territory so they can feel comfortable and learn resilience.

The Right Mental Environment

The right home environment is about exposing them to things that they can question and challenge. It’s always important to remember that if you have a home environment that is centered around the television, you may want to give them strict limits on how much TV and screen time they have. Children can experience more nightmares if there’s a greater combination of light and sound, and this is why you may want to rethink excessive screen time.

The Emotional Space

As far as mental development is concerned, if you can give them more opportunities to be stimulated through their emotional environment you can help them express themselves better. Allowing them freedom of expression in a constructive manner is essential. We can use the home environment as an incredibly supportive tool to help them express themselves. At home, we can give them the emotional nurturing they need by being respectful to them and teaching them that any form of physical or verbal abuse will not be tolerated. And we have to remember that when we teach our children the importance of this, we’ve got to make sure they can stand up for themselves as well. This means that we’ve got to get the balance right in creating a positive and safe environment that focuses on respect, strength, honor, and tolerance.

All these things sound like a tumultuous task, but what you need to remember before you move to a new home with your children is if you are providing them with the fundamentals of respect and attention, they will feel supported. The right home environment for our children is not necessarily about the physical environment, but about making sure they feel they have our support.