Inspiring Your Children to Become More Active

While children are absolutely known to have their own little personalities that seemingly spring from nowhere (and are very strong at times), it’s true to say that our parental influence can help them learn life skills, preferences, and daily habits. For this reason, it’s a good idea to present them with as many of our good habits and perspectives as possible, while eschewing those parts of our character we’re working on.

Often, these good habits can involve measures like learning how to clean their room or to eat healthily and get used to healthy food. Perhaps one of the best, however, one we’ll be looking towards in this article, is figuring out how to make our children not only get more active, but become inspired to do so. After all, the allure of television, the games console, the tablet device and the warm comfort of our living room and their bedrooms can be hard to fight against sometimes, particularly on a day off school.

In this post, we’ll discuss numerous ways in which thanks to your effort, inspiring your children to become more active is possible:

Give Them Reasons To Play Outside

Our children will naturally go outside because it’s in their inherent nature to want to explore. That said, as mentioned above, it can be hard for them to do so when so many colorful distractions line the interior of your home. For that reason, giving them every reason to go outside and explore is an essential element of having them actually do this.

To start with, an awesome climbing frame, trampoline, or most of all, the best wood playhouse can help them go outside and have a great time, getting active, playing with their siblings or friends, and having something that can distract and stimulate them from hours on end. By virtue of having access to this, children will burn energy, run around, dream up a range of play scenarios, and have fun within your secure garden space. A little investments and some appropriate observation is all it takes.

Enjoy Small Family Trips

It’s good to get out and to enjoy some small family trips together. Simply going to the park can be great, but going to the museum, trekking around local towns and stopping in cafes for a bite to eat, as well as taking some time to visit community events can all be a great idea.

When you enjoy small family trips in that way, your children, by virtue of following you with little legs, burn off much of their energy. Over time, this can make a tremendous difference, making the idea of going out and trying new things exciting, rather than a chore to keep up on.

Take Up An Activity Together

It’s good to take up activities with our children, to make sure that they feel capable and interested in what we have to offer. Children will naturally learn by osmosis, and they gain interests by that, too. For instance, if you spend time gardening and invite them to come and plant pots with you, or to help plant some vegetables in your garden patch, or to watch you from a safe distance as you install a new water feature, or give them some spending money to help you paint the garden fence, they’re much more likely to go outside.

But of course, you don’t need to structure an intensive method in order to get the best from our children and to make them feel more active. All you really need to do is to go outside and play with them, be that kicking a football around, throwing a ball back and forth, or playing with your new, excitable dog. Perhaps you could use some outside time as well, as activity never stops being relevant and important to our health just because we get older. 

Encourage Appropriate Sports

Not all children are into sports, that much is true, but there might be a sport appropriate for their sensibilities now. They might prefer gymnastics over a team sport, for instance, or perhaps you could bring them to a martial arts class – a great way to learn self-esteem and to learn self-defense skills.

Sports could involve joining your local rowing club as a child entrant, or it could mean heading to enjoy baseball or cricket. Whatever is appropriate in your area, and whatever has resources put into it can always serve as a worthwhile option. Even if your child isn’t the most athletic, they can often get much from this kind of team activity. If they feel more fluid and energetic, dancing could be for them, while a range of disability-accessible sports such as wheelchair basketball might be for them. Sure, it will take membership fees, the cost of new equipment and your time and energy taking them to sessions to yield the best results, but the outcome will be tremendously useful for their development. Moreover, your child will get to have plenty of fun.

Schedule Play Dates

Scheduling play dates for your child to get out and spend some time with their friend is a great idea. Of course, it’s important for you to vet the parents and their child so that you know you’re sending them to a safe place, or to invite the family to your house first and foremost depending on your sensibilities.

Children have a great way of getting active and playing with almost nothing, so no matter what, they’re sure to have a good time. It’s also important to consider the appropriateness of cultivating this relationship with your child. For instance, if your child has diabetes, you want to be certain a parent can handle their insulin or report an emergency if one occurs. This can take time. That said, this effort is more than worth it not only for your child to curate friends, but to enjoy the benefits of getting out and being active, both physically and mentally.

With this advice, your children are sure to become more active and to enjoy the health and developmental benefits from such an effort.