Theyโre spending more family time together, the kids are sleeping better, activity levels are up, TV levels are down, tummies are more โin tuneโ, and their health-related worries have eased.
And they credit a lot of it to the QUT-led PEACH program โ a free healthy lifestyle six-month program aimed at families and funded by the Queensland Government.
Meet the Drydens
Brisbaneโs Dan and Carly Dryden, and their children Ava (7) and Sienna (4), joined the program mid-2015 after seeing a TV story about it.
โMy wife and I had been talking about going to a dietitian to make sure we were getting it right for our kids, so I jumped on the web to look up the PEACH program and it was just what we were looking for,โ Dan said.
The family already ate healthy food, but portion size and knowing when tummies were full was more of an issue โ particularly combined with a lack of exercise.
โIn Australia, if you have a toddler or baby and they are hoeing into their food everyone praises you: โOh what a good eaterโ, it is something that is celebrated, and the Drydenโs have celebrated this approach to eating with all our family,โ Dan said. โBut that โhealthy appetiteโ can turn into a problem.โ
Meet the PEACH Program
The PEACH program includes nine weekly group sessions at a local community venue (plus a 10th follow-up session down the track) which focus on teaching parents about nutrition, relationships with food and eating, how to change family lifestyle behaviours and making healthy eating affordable.
While the parent sessions are taking place, the kids enjoy active play with a trained child physical activity facilitator.
โThe girls were both a little bit shy at first and didnโt want to be there, but it taught them it is fun to be active and play games and run around and get sweaty,โ Dan said.
โWe went in thinking weโve got improve our eating habits but what we got out of it was a more wholistic view about a healthy lifestyle for the whole family.
โWeโre very aware now that activity level goes hand in hand with screen time and weโve limited screen time. With eating, the big message we are trying to get through to both our kids is โlisten to your tummy โ know when you are fullโ.โ
The importance of routines
Routine is now very important in the Dryden household.
โScreens go off at dinner-time and stay off,โ Dan said.
โDinner time goes into tidying up time, into bath time, and to bedtime. We went from struggling to get them into bed by 7.30-8pm to now being in bed at 7pm every night. And they are sleeping in more too so overall they are getting much more sleep.
โThe girls do karate, weโve bought a couple of basketballs and we walk to school sometimes. We have a pool and that gets lots of use and they love dance parties. And once every couple of weeks we do something very active, like all go do a bushwalk together.โ
Dan said he went into PEACH hoping there would be a โlightbulb momentโ or โsilver bulletโ that would change everything.
โBut there wasnโt that one magic thing,โ he said. โIt was about wholistic lifestyle changes and doing it bit by bit โ but it has worked. One of the biggest things is that the kidsโ attitude toward being active has changed โ thereโs not a groan every time we talk about it. And, as parents, itโs about us enabling that activity and getting past that โtoo busyโ factor.โ
Families with a primary-school aged child are eligible for the free PEACH (Parenting, Eating and Activity for Child Health) program, which is run by QUTโs School of Exercise of Nutrition Sciences. Call 1800 263 519 or register directly at http://www.peachqld.com.au/.
This article was published in Issue 14 of our print magazine, February/March 2016.