For some parents, it’s part of the fabric of raising a child. For others, it’s not necessarily so important, but can be later on in life.
Sports is something that you may think that either your child has an affinity for or doesn’t, but it’s vital that we all get into the habit of keeping fit. The fact is that when we talk about keeping fit, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with sports.
We may want to use sport as a way to keep our children fit and healthy. But when we’re looking at health and fitness in the grand scheme of things, what does it really take to ensure that our children stay healthy and happy?
Giving Them the Right Stimulus
Keeping fit and healthy isn’t just to do with sports, but it could be a big part of their interest in keeping fit. But you’ve got to ensure that you get them interested when they are young, but it also has to relate to the things that will keep them exercising for the rest of their lives. This is why many families start exercising by playing sports
. And you can easily do this in your garden by either kicking a soccer ball around or if your children are interested in sports like baseball, you can give them plenty of equipment to use around the back garden. Items such as a pitching net can make a big difference in terms of getting kids interested in baseball. Of course, even if your children aren’t keen on sports themselves the next point is pivotal.
Getting Them To Play
Playing is just as important, if not more important, than exercise and sports. We can become somewhat fixated on the idea of exercise in a traditional sense. But this is why we’ve got into the habit of just running around and ensuring that we all get the heart pumping.
Exercise is not about cranking out a certain amount of press-ups. We have to remember that exercise, especially for children, is all about giving them that free rein when it comes to playing. So ensuring that our children can run around and actually enjoy the fact that they are exercising while not necessarily exercising in the traditional sense can be a very sneaky approach to ensuring that they are keeping fit. How do we do this?
The fact is that it’s down to us, the parents. When our children like to play and run around, we just have to encourage this. Additionally, we can play with our children and just provide that overall baseline for keeping fit. Many children just like to sit down and do nothing and this means that trying to get them off the couch is a lot harder than we think, but this is where we have to start being cleverer and ensuring that we appeal to their interests.
A very simple example would be if they are interested in video games, we can use certain video games as a way to get them up and off the couch. There are plenty of games on the Nintendo Switch that can help with this. And it’s also important to note that the older your kids are, the savvier they will be in your attempts to cajole them into exercising. So the final point would be the best, yet hardest task to achieve.
Appealing on Their Level
When we have a mountain to climb as far as keeping our children interested in exercise is concerned, we’ve got to appeal to their best interests. Exercise covers so many different disciplines, but this is where you’ve got to start appealing to our children’s interests and desires based on what they are interested in, but also their life circumstances.
A very good example would be if your child is being teased at school. This is something that nobody wants to hear that their child is going through. We can all benefit from teaching our children ways to defend themselves. And while this may depend on age, when you have younger children, they want to be able to feel like they can defend themselves.
Of course, it’s down to you to teach them how to use their words effectively, but we can’t escape the fact that there are fantastic benefits of using martial arts like karate or boxing. These are types of exercises that don’t just work wonders in terms of the cardiovascular system and overall fitness but will help your children to have that confidence, especially when there is a bully or someone intimidating.
But it’s not about ensuring that your children use their fists as weapons constantly; it’s more about them having the confidence within themselves that they are exhibiting this ability to withstand any taunting or pressure. This is naturally a very important by-product of exercises like martial arts or boxing.
You need to get into the habit of ensuring your children have the skills and practice them outside of school, but when your children have these items of knowledge that can help them in tough situations, they will never feel the need to use them, because nobody will actually meddle with them in the first place! So rather than thinking you need to look after them, you can be safe in the knowledge that your child is using something that’s incredibly beneficial for them in their lives as well as keeping them supremely fit and healthy.
There are many ways for us to encourage our children to exercise. And sometimes our children won’t want to look after their health and fitness but may have to provide stark examples in the real world of people who didn’t look after themselves. Rather than scaring them into fitness, the most important thing to remember is to set them up for life with the right habits.
