More Initiatives for Infants and Toddlers Under Grow Well SG and Assessing Long-term Impact on Children's Development

Parents play a vital role in their children's growth and development, and healthy habit formation from birth. Therefore, Grow Well SG initiatives for infants and toddlers focus on educating parents, including first-time parents, about age-appropriate healthy behaviours and how to inculcate them. For example, we have introduced the Childhood Health Behaviours checklist as part of the Childhood Developmental Screening visits from age 0 to 6 years old, to raise parental awareness and encourage behaviour change early. Complementing this is a range of practical guidelines and resources, available through multiple platforms, like Parent Hub, Parenting for Wellness, Families for Life programmes and resources, and the Early Childhood Development Agency's (ECDA's) Beanstalk. In addition, ECDA's revised Early Years Development Framework and its Educators' Guide guide educators in preschool to provide meaningful experiences that promote children's overall well-being, learning and development.

While parents are doing their best, we know that parents today face new challenges in managing children's digital use due to the growing prevalence of social media and technology. We will continue to enhance Grow Well SG to provide greater support to parents in this digital age.

The indicators we use to assess the impact of Grow Well SG will cover the lifestyle habits of children, such as time spent on screens, physical activity and sleep. We will also conduct surveys to measure parental awareness on healthy habits to evaluate and refine our initiatives.