Personal hygiene is not only important for your self-esteem and confidence levels and how others portray and perceive you, but it is also crucial for your own levels of both physical health and emotional wellbeing.

So, with this in mind, continue reading for a comprehensive guide on how to teach kids good hygiene and grooming habits.

Brush Your Teeth Together

The best way to get your child into the routine of brushing their teeth, both in the morning and before they go to sleep, is to brush your teeth together with them in the bathroom.

If you are a regular foster carer for a child or children or are providing emergency fostering care, even for a short amount of time, teaching children how to brush their teeth correctly is a great habit to encourage and something they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Hand Washing

Obviously, following the outbreak of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, children and adults alike are now fully versed not only in the art of proper and thorough hand washing but also in its importance.

It is still, however, a good idea to instill the importance of hand washing into your children from as early an age as possible and mention the following reasons as to why they must always wash their hands:

• To minimize the risk of infection
• To avoid someone else having to go to hospital
• To protect your own immune system
• To handle foodstuffs in a safe and healthy way
• To ensure the overall health of your body

Encourage Them to Enjoy Drinking Water

As an adult, you will probably be fully aware of the numerous health benefits, and indeed hygiene benefits, a person can be afforded when choosing to drink water over fizzy drinks, juices, and obviously, alcohol, yet you may well still choose to ignore the advice.

For your children, you can only hope that they heed your words more than you do, as drinking water is not only good for the body in terms of health, but it can also prevent other health issues such as foul-smelling breath.

Hygienic Toilet Habits

Another hugely important aspect of teaching your child how to be healthy and well looked after in terms of their physical health and overall appearance is to emphasize the importance of proper and hygienic toilet habits.

As you may well already be fully aware, the toilet is the one place in your home that contains the largest number of different germs and types of bacteria, some of them which actually grow and thrive on the surface of the toilet seat itself.

Things to teach your child around the point of hygienic toilet habits include:

• How to flush the toilet properly
• Staying with your child to guide them through each stage of the process
• Instill the need to wipe the seat of a public toilet first
• Teach how to properly wash and wipe after they have used the toilet