Essay on Contemporary Parents: Building Autonomy & Healthy Eating Habits in Adolescents

Contemporary parenting refers to the mutual involvement of both parents in the upbringing of a child by building autonomy by exercising, experiencing and practising different activities on a child. Adolescence period changes the eating habits of individuals, Increase in the growth rate and change within the composition of the body, increased mobility and lack of supervision by the parents calls for healthy eating habits among the adolescents. Healthy eating habits end up in good health, and thus reduce obesity. When an individual takes a range of nutritious meals, taking meals that are less in fats reduces fats that may cause overweight on someone. Taking food that is less in sugar help to enhance the skin; this can be because the collagen protein within the skin is ready to repair it. Healthy eating habits help in intellectual development, and this can be as a result of cell proliferation, hormone metabolism and neurotransmitter that are essential as they create the enzyme system within the brain.

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During early adolescence, individuals have to sleep because they are going through a second developmental stage and cognitive maturation, active lives, having a busy schedule also the body and brain functions takes place. Sleep is vital among the first adolescents because it helps to boost learning, listening and concentrating in their academic work; this creates good academic performance among adolescents. Individuals also tend to be free from risky behavior such as smoking and drug abuse. Adolescents with enough sleep have greater capabilities of controlling their emotions and don't seem to possess anxiety or perhaps suffer from depression, and this is often because they have a positive attitude on how to deal with the challenges facing them that results to the good higher cognitive process.

Eating habits are also influenced by socio-emotional factors, with the socio factors, adolescents tend to eat more when they have peers that eat lots and among people that are familiar to them. Individuals from a poor background tend to possess poor eating habits than those from an expensive background, and this is often also influenced by the norms like attitudes towards overeating by a specific culture influence the eating habits. Emotional factors also influence the eating habits, different emotions cause different eating habits, having negative emotions like boredom, anxiety, stress and depression make individual while individuals who are healthy tend to eat well compared to the sick ones.

Parents should play a key role in ensuring that adolescents have healthy eating habits and the requirement for them to sleep. With a good diet, parents should involve the youths in selecting, preparing the meals and recommending serving size and that they should encourage Adolescents to take more fluids after exercise (Ishizuka, 2019). With sleep, they should encourage adolescents to take a nap after school or work, and they should help in preparing the schedule for the adolescent after school to assist them to get time to rest, and also they must be ready to work along with the teenager adjust their schedule.

In the early adolescence, individuals undergo an increase in growth rate and change in composition, due to this, they need healthy eating habits that help them to be healthy, have good skin and good intellectual development. They also need sleep to perform well in their academic work and have great capabilities in controlling emotions.

Reference

Ishizuka, P. (2019). Social class, gender, and contemporary parenting standards in the United States: Evidence from a national survey experiment. Social Forces, 98(1), 31-58.