This Father’s Day we interviewed the very talented Mohit Hussein and asked him few questions on food and nutrition and how it plays an important role in a child’s life.
About Mohit Hussein – He is the Creator of the popular YouTube channel SIT. He is a well-known Film & Television director. He is also an experienced writer and proud father of two beautiful children Areeza and Arham.
- How does it feel to become a father for the second time, how is it different?
Honestly it’s a bit more challenging this time because as first time parent, you can get away with a few mistakes and its okay to learn in the process. But once you raise a child to an age of 6, the second time the pressure is more. Now you are a seasoned player and more is expected out of you. Me and Chhavi are enjoying the process and it’s fun to be honest being a parent the second time.
- What health goals as a father do you have for your children?
The only one thing that we as parents focus on now is to make sure that their immunity is strong because if your core strength and immunity is good, everything else falls into place. And all of this is dependent on the nutrition. The food that you give your body will determine how good your immunity is when you grow up. For me as a father, looking at the long run, I would give my entire focus on building the immunity.
- Being a father, did it have any kind of effect on your life from a health perspective?
Honestly, I have never been an unhealthy kind of person. I have my weaknesses and I do believe that one should never deprive your body of anything. In moderation you can give sinful things to your body and balance it out with exercise and fitness regime.
- How do you think you can help your children make good and healthy food choices?
That is a good question and I firmly believe that junk should be avoided at a very early stage of life. I differ with parents who give excuses that their children do not listen to them and give them junk food to eat which is unhealthy for their body. Again, the key is that they shouldn’t be deprived of anything but there should be certain limitations to it and they should be allowed to eat certain things in moderation so that they don’t feel left out and get to it with a vengeance and start lying to you to eat those foods.
We as parents have been successful in developing good eating habits with Areeza and she has been a good child. Whenever we go out and someone offers her unhealthy food she actually says a NO. She is 6 years of age and she has never tasted COLA. Her tastes are not developed for unhealthy kind of food and hence its easier for her to say a NO therefore it is very important to develop good eating habits at an early age.
- How do you respond when Areeza asks for unhealthy food?
She has some weaknesses in food like noodles and fillet fish burger at Mac Donalds. We let her do it once or twice in a month so that she doesn’t feel we don’t let her do it at all.
- How do you make sure they are physically active or develop the habit of exercise at a young age?
One big way to do that was not give her the screen time. Areeza’s screen time is zero. Though we come from a background of content creation, she has not watched any content in her life. She has no exposure to television, iPad or iPhone. And this actually gives her a lot of time and helps her to concentrate more on the outdoor activity. It develops an interest to go down and she is great on the monkey bar. She does things which I still can’t do it. She loves gymnastics and can do full 90 split and she is learning swimming now. For her, outdoor activity becomes a very integral part of growing up and that’s exactly how we wanted and Areeza responded beautifully.
- What advice would you like to give parents?
Very early on when you start weaning your baby after the age of 6 months, it’s important to give them the taste of all the foods you want them to eat when they grow up. That’s the time when their palate is actually developing. So if you give them the right things at the right time, in the long run, they will relish and enjoy those foods growing up. That’s the advice I would give to parents for now as I am also learning as father
