Are your children prepared for a future without you? Have you been instilling good and lifelong habits? If you aren’t sure you’ve been doing enough for your kids, here are four ways you should start making an effort.
1: Stay Active
According to the President’s Council on Fitness, the average child spends more than seven hours a day in front of their televisions, laptops and tablets. But you can’t blame the problem on them: According to the same statistics, more than 80 percent of parents don’t meet the fitness criteria of an active adult. Children take their example from your laziness and inactivity, so do a favor for all of you and get off the couch. Talk a walk around the neighborhood. Go to the community pool. Join a sports league.
2: Insure Everything
No one ever expects bad things to happen to them, but when you have kids, it’s time to strip away those blinders and face reality. Accidents can happen at any time, and you need to be prepared just in case. Insure your home so they’ll still have shelter after fires and floods; insure your car so they’ll still be able to get to school after a wreck; insure your life so they’ll become your beneficiaries in case of the unthinkable. Discuss your options with Calgary insurance companies like Thomson Schindle Green Insurance & Financial Services Ltd to see what is available to you.
3: Communicate
When your child was born, you told yourself that you wouldn’t be like your own parents. You would communicate! You would have sit-down discussions! Yet somehow that dream popped and fizzled along adolescence. More than 50 percent of teens don’t want the sex talk from their parents, and a further 70 percent hide their online activity from mom and dad. If you want to forge a meaningful relationship with your teen, you need to break down these walls by opening more dialogue.
4: Make A Will
Again, there isn’t a parent alive who wants to imagine dying and leaving their children alone. But it happens every day: 153 million orphans around the world are living without at least one parent. It’s simply irresponsible not to accept the possibility that something could happen to you, too. Make out a will so your kids will have something of yours after you go, whether it’s practical, personal or just sentimental. The important thing is to make sure they know you care.
These are just four things that every parent needs to do for their kids. A full list could cover hundreds of topics, of course, but these should be a priority for the health, wellness and future security of your children.