The health of children is the most concerned problem of many parents. In fact, many diseases are caused by the bad life style in childhood. Data show that many children do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. In the United States, more than one-third of children and teenagers eat fast food every day, as many as one-third of children are overweight or obese, and 9% of children's deciduous tooth caries in the world are not treated in time.

Parents as the first teachers of children, how to promote children to develop a healthy lifestyle? Baker, morawska and Mitchell (2019) reviewed the research results in related research fields, so that we can see that children's self-regulation ability may play an important role in it.

1、Children's self regulation and health

Self regulation refers to the ability to regulate one's behavior, cognition and emotion in the context of environmental needs. It helps to select, monitor and optimize beneficial goals, while minimizing the adverse factors that hinder the realization of goals.

Many studies have shown that children's self-regulation skills (such as emotion regulation, delayed gratification, attention concentration, inhibition control) are related to children's health. Children's poor ability of delayed gratification predicts overweight in later childhood and the increase of BMI in adulthood.

Some interventions to enhance self-regulation ability can promote children's health behaviors (such as the maintenance of obese children's weight loss behavior and the improvement of adolescent hand hygiene). Therefore, parents can promote children's health by raising their children's self-regulation ability.

2、 Parenting strategies

Many health-related behaviors have strong habitual components, which must be repeated regularly for a long time in order to be beneficial. Therefore, using routines and establishing habits may be one of the most effective ways for parents to enhance their children's self-regulation ability and healthy lifestyle.

For example, when a child repeatedly pursues the goal (healthy teeth) through specific behaviors (brushing teeth) in a given environment (after meals), he will develop healthy habits. Parents are in a unique position to help their children set goals and repeatedly practice the required behaviors, provide environmental information, construct their children's environment to indicate the required behaviors (take out their toothbrush to remind them to brush their teeth), monitor behaviors and provide rewards (such as praise) to help children form habits.

Children still need strong support from their parents. When children gradually adjust their behavior, cognition and emotion over time, and develop the skills needed to complete the task at hand (such as holding the toothbrush and brushing properly), self-regulation skills will be transferred from parents to children.

For example, children plan ahead and remember the instructions to brush their teeth after dinner; inhibit the dominant reaction of continuous play and implement the non dominant reaction of going to the bathroom to brush their teeth; they remember the necessary steps; monitor their own brushing to ensure that all teeth are cleaned correctly. In this way, the early health habits not only promote the development of self-regulation skills, but also pave the way for a healthy life style.