Getting Your Kids Fit
Are your kids game-playing, computer-addicted couch potatoes? Do they eat too much junk food? Would you like to get them to exercise more and have a healthier lifestyle? Here are some tips that may work for you and your family.
Kids Learn What’s Caught, Not What’s Taught
The best, most effective way you can get your kids to make lifestyle changes is to make them yourself. Whether they will admit it or not, you are the most influential person in their lives. They are watching constantly, and looking for any inconsistency. If you don’t exercise, they won’t either. If you watch TV and eat junk food, so will they. It may take them a while to catch your lifestyle changes, but they are much more likely to change if you do.
One way to get your kids to catch lifestyle changes is to make fitness a family affair. Do active things with your kids. Choose active vacations; take a hiking and camping vacation instead of staying in a hotel and driving everywhere. Go swimming or skiing together. Play together—throw a football, or play volleyball, or do somersaults on the lawn, or play twister. Kids like doing these things, and they like doing them with you.
Turn Off the TV
A recent study showed that kids who watch more than a couple of hours of TV a day are more obese than kids who don’t. There are two factors involved. Kids who watch a lot of TV aren’t active, and they eat more junk food. TV bombards them with images and ads of junk food, and TV watching is the most sedentary activity you can do.
Limiting your kids’ TV watching is an effective way to increase their activity and fitness levels. Pediatricians say children should not have TV in their bedrooms, and it’s a lot easier for you to control how much they watch if the only TV they have access to is in a family area. You can also monitor what they watch that way.
Making lifestyle changes yourself, involving the whole family in fitness and turning off the TV are simple things you can do that will make your kids—and yourself—healthier and more active.