HOME: FIRST PILLAR OF SUPPORT FOR CHILDREN

American homes are under high stress.

Summary: Homes are under high stress; healthy diets are difficult to achieve; school meals and community programs could help.

Home is the most impactful place in the lives of children. It is the ‘human nest’ where the knowledge, time, and commitment of parents shapes the early development of offspring and where a child’s physical, mental, and spiritual health first takes hold. When the environment is healthy and parents can be attentive, home sets positive values, matures healthy emotions, and instills good self-care.

This is the ideal. In today’s busy, stress-filled world, it is an ideal not easily met.

Home plays a central role in the Living Well Locally vision, and we have explored its impact in multiple posts: how losing home has contributed to losing health (here), about the power of well-tended homes (here), and the healing potential of the home kitchen (here). We describe the role of clinic, home, and field in healing chronic disease (here), and we began sharing resources on creating healthy homes (here).

The American Psychological Association’s annual polling of homes and families in 2024 reported the top two stressors were health and finances, both at 82%. The fact that quality family time at home is now down to 37 minutes a day is a likely reason why working parents report high levels of worry about the development of their children.

Let’s look at one critical element of health that originates in the home - food. From pre-natal to late teens, home has a major impact on what and where children eat. As America’s food supply went from being mostly ‘real and natural’ in the last century to being ‘highly and ultra-processed’ today, diet-related diseases have risen, including obesity and chronic illness in children. Food served to children today, whether on cafeteria plates, in homes, or at restaurants is seldom the natural fare their grandparents or even their parents had growing up. No space impacts what children eat more directly and lastingly than the daily choices and decisions made in the home.

As mainstream healthcare begins to apply ‘food as medicine’, we are seeing not only what is required to turn around America’s chronic disease epidemic, but how far from nutrient-dense and toxin-free our daily foods actually are.

Beyond food there are many factors in the home that support or harm children’s health. Developing bodies and minds are especially harmed by toxic exposures, many of which exist inside our homes. Biotoxins from mold, chemicals outgassing from building materials and furniture, fumes from cleaning products, and direct contact with personal care products, cosmetics and even clothing too often contaminate bodies and living spaces. Elimination begins with awareness and is critical to supporting children’s health. (For consumer guides on foods, toxins and more: EWG.ORG.)

Turning around chronic disease and renewing children’s health will take re-inhabiting our homes in new and healthy ways, and this in turn will require awareness and lifestyle change . . . and more than a little time.

Meanwhile, how do we feed America’s children healthy food? With k-12 students getting at least one and often two meals a day at school, putting real food meals on cafeteria plates could serve all children equally well, while improving behavior and academic performance. Schools would benefit from as well as support farm-to-school programs and help build the community food webs that are so essential to place-based wellness. Community-based programs aligned with healthier eating can also help, like this one recently posted by Marion for an after-school program that teaches students cooking skills, responsibility as family members, and sharing of healthy food knowledge.

Still, there is really nothing that can take the place of home as the first and most critical pillar of support for children. It will be an interesting journey from where we are today to where home can be, to where real food meals are daily fare, and our homes are the toxin-free and peaceful sanctuaries needed for rest and recovery from the stressors of modern life.

Healing homes are foundational to the Living Well Locally vision of place-based wellness and the primary contributors to local cultures of health.