Making sure your child is physically healthy is an important part of supporting their ongoing growth and development. Child physical health is more than just tracking their height and weight. It also includes making sure they have good nutrition, enough physical activity, restful sleep, timely immunizations, and strong dental health.
Scheduling Regular Checkups
An important first step in making sure your child stays healthy is building a relationship with your child’s doctor or health care team. Scheduling regular health check-ups (or well-child visits) are an important way to keep track of your child's health and development and learn about ways to help your child grow and thrive. Depending on your child’s age, you may have well-child visits every few weeks, months, or yearly.
Learn more about partnering with your child’s health care team through well-child visits to support their physical health:
- The Bright Futures Family Pocket Guide: Raising Healthy Infants, Children, and Adolescents from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) helps families and health care providers work together to promote children’s health and wellness.
- The Well-Child Visit: Why Go and What to Expect tip sheet from AAP shares information and resources to help you prepare for your child’s well-child visit, including what will happen during and after the visit.
- These “Checkup Checklists” from AAP can help you prepare for each of your child’s well-child visits, from birth to age 6.
Getting Timely Immunizations
Making sure your child gets timely vaccinations will protect them from serious diseases and protect those around them who may have a weakened immune system.
Learn more about children’s immunizations and the importance of timely immunizations for your child in these resources.
- Learn why childhood immunization is important in AAP’s resource on immunization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) child vaccinations information web page.
- Following the recommended vaccine schedule provides your child with the best protection from potentially serious diseases. Read the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for infants, young children, and teens.
- Do you have questions about vaccinations? The CDC provides answers to common questions about vaccines that you may find helpful.
Healthy Eating
Proper nutrition lays the foundation for good health. Encourage healthy eating by offering your child nutritious meals, snacks, and beverages to fuel their growing bodies. Making nutritious choices for your child promotes healthy growth and helps your child develop good eating habits for life.
Learn more about encouraging your child's healthy nutrition from these resources.
All Ages
- Check out the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) ”Nibbles for Health: Nutrition Newsletters for Parents of Young Children” for a variety of tips, including how to add more vegetables to your child’s diet, ideas for healthy snacks, and how to help a choosy eater try nutritious foods.
- Drinking water is important for good health no matter your age. The amount of water the body needs depends on factors like age, weight, and activity level. This ”Water: How Much Do Kids Need?” tip sheet from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics gives recommendations on how much water kids need every day for healthy development.
Infants
Breastfeeding is an excellent source of nutrition for newborns. AAP recommends breastfeeding as the sole source of nutrition for your baby for about 6 months. But breastfeeding can be hard and in certain situations, it may not be possible. If it is not possible to feed your baby breast milk, infant formula will still provide balanced nutrition. Continue breast milk or infant formula until your baby is at least 1 year old.
- Read about how you can support your infant’s healthy nutrition throug
h “Feeding Your Baby from Cradle to Table,” a resource from the the University of Illinois Extension. - Find tips and resources to support breastfeeding through AAP’s breastfeeding information web page and USDA’s breastfeeding support web page.
- If you are having difficulty breastfeeding, check out these helpful resources:
- “When Breastfeeding Isn’t Working,” USDA
- “What Is the Best Food for Your Baby?” University of Illinois Extension
- ”Healthy Eating for Infants,” from USDA’s MyPlate, provides families with tips to support infants’ healthy nutrition when they are ready to introduce solid foods.
Toddlers
Toddlers’ appetites tend to decrease after their first birthday. They tend to become pickier in their eating habits and may not want to eat at meal times. Learn more about how to support your toddler’s independence while maintaining healthy nutrition with the following resources.
- “Nutrition Guide for Toddlers,” Nemours Kids Health
- “Nutrition” for toddlers, AAP
Preschoolers
Preschool-age children’s appetites vary from day to day and increase during growth spurts. Learn how to support your preschoolers’ nutrition with these resources.
- ”Nutrition and Fitness” for preschoolers, AAP
- Healthy Eating for Preschoolers tip sheet and daily food checklist, USDA
School-Age Children
School-age children love snacking. Find healthy and fun afterschool snack ideas from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Getting Physical Activity
Building good physical activity habits begins during infancy and continues throughout life. Physical activity builds stronger bones and muscles, improves coordination, reduces stress, and increases children’s self-esteem.
Just like adults, exercise is important for children’s health and well-being. Did you know babies need at least 30 minutes of physical activity during the day? Find more tips to support your child’s physical activity in the following resources.
- Families are key in helping their children become more physically active. Find suggestions to help your child be more active in ”11 Ways to Encourage Your Child to be Active,” from AAP.
- AAP recommends children of all ages be physically active every day. Read the tips in ”Making Physical Activity a Way of Life: AAP Policy Explained” to help your child develop positive attitudes about physical activity and build healthy habits.
- Play can be a great way to get physical activity and establish habits children can use throughout their lives. Active Play: Health Tips for Families, from the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness, provides tips you can use to help your child build lifelong healthy habits through active play.
Developing Safe and Healthy Sleep Habits
Children’s healthy development relies on them getting enough quality sleep. Children grow and heal during restful sleep. You can help your child develop healthy sleep habits by setting a consistent bedtime routine and bedtime. When children do not get enough sleep, they are at higher risk of getting sick and struggling with their behavior.
Learn more about the importance of helping your child get quality sleep from these resources.
- Find out how much sleep your child needs based on their age, as recommended by AAP.
- Children need a consistent bedtime and predictable bedtime routines. Learn more about how you can build healthy sleep routines for your children with this tip sheet from the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness.
- The Sleep Foundation provides tips you can use to help kids and teens develop healthy sleep habits.
Use these resources to learn about infant safe sleep.
- This Safe Sleep for Your Baby tip sheet from the National Institutes of Health provides tips to help you reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome and other sleep-related infant deaths.
- Learn more about how families can help reduce infants’ risk of ”Sudden Unexpected Infant Death and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” and help babies sleep safely with this CDC resource.
- This ”Getting Your Baby to Sleep” tip sheet from AAP has tips to help you make sure your infant gets enough quality sleep.
- When done correctly, swaddling can be an effective technique to help calm infants and promote sleep. Swaddling involves wrapping a baby up gently and snuggly in a light, breathable blanket. Learn more about swaddling and how to do it safely in this resource from AAP.
Supporting Dental Health
Dental health is important for children of all ages. Good dental health prevents tooth decay and other issues that may cause mouth pain when children eat and speak. You can promote good dental hygiene by doing the following activities:
- Cleaning babies’ gums
- Brushing children's teeth and teaching children how to brush their teeth on their own
- Limiting the amount of sugary drinks and foods children eat
- Taking children to the dentist by their first birthday and regularly after that
Learn more about promoting your child’s good dental health from these resources.
- Brushing your child’s teeth is important for good dental health. Review “Health Habits for Healthy Smiles,” from the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness for easy tips you can use to support healthy tooth brushing habits with your child.
- This ”Teething and Tooth Care” resource from AAP provides tips for supporting your infant’s dental health.
- Did you know cavities are one of the most common chronic diseases in children? Cavities can lead to problems eating, speaking, playing, and learning if a dentist does not treat them quickly. Read the CDC’s “Children’s Oral Health” for tips on how to keep your child’s mouth and teeth healthy.
- America's Pediatric Dentists “Education and Resources for Parents” offers resources to support good dental health based on a child’s age. This resource includes an interactive tool to help you find a pediatric dentist in your area.