Being a parent is not easy, especially when there’s so much pressure to strive for perfection and raise your children. While you’re struggling to ensure healthy behaviours and a good lifestyle, your kid might not be having fun on this growing up journey. Moreover, school and extracurricular activities can be energy-draining, and they’ll be too tired to be active outside their usual schedule. While they’re not aware of the benefits of consistent physical activity, you can help them create healthy habits that can be fun at the same time.
Besides that, if you want to bond with your kid more, you can play with them and encourage them to be creative in their activities and explore what they like to do. So, if you’re out of ideas, here’s how you can help your kid enjoy physical activities.
Create an outdoor setting
If you’re not sure what to start with, you can create an environment that will make them want to go outside and play. Depending on your available space and the kid’s age, you can go from making a simple swing to installing a wooden climbing frame in your garden.
You can do plenty of activities with a climbing frame and swing set canopy. You can choose from having one or more swings, sandpits at the bottom, a small house for them to hide or climbing stones attached to the wall. Fatmoose provides quality climbing frames made out of high-quality finished woods that are water-repellent, avoiding fungi, rot or mould. In addition to the best quality, sustainability is one of Fatmoose’s standards when it comes to wooden products for your outdoor activities. These structures are easy to assemble, and have a ten-year guarantee.
Besides these fun frameworks, you could make your garden an enjoyable space for your kids to spend time in. For example, having a colourful garden full of flowers and trees will create an inviting environment for them.
Indoor activities
Physical activities are not necessarily to be done outside. You can have fun inside the house too and exercise with your kid at the same time. Be careful before starting the activities to eliminate any harmful objects and provide a safe space, in order to avoid injuries. Inside, both of you can play:
- Treasure hunting (to make it more challenging, set a time limit for every treasure)
- Simon says (you can increase the speed with which you command and make it a competition)
- I Spy with my little eye
- Hide and seek
- Karaoke games
Play with your kids
Another thing you can do is find time to play with your kids. Even if it’s for a few minutes in the morning or after work, building a strong relationship with your kid through play comes in handy. By providing a mutual interaction with your child, you can allow them to explore the environment without fearing you’ll control and intervene.
For example, in the morning, you could quickly play a game of throwing and catching, helping you both energise for the day. It’s a good morning routine, and it will develop their motor skills and encourage them to build good habits. After playing with their toys at night, you could help them sort and gather by making it a competition and whoever wins gets (almost) whatever they want.
Of course, after a long day at work, it seems impossible to be creative and come up with ideas to help them adopt this lifestyle. But remember that active kids:
- Can cope better with stress
- Can sleep better
- Have better academic scores
- Are less prone to developing heart conditions
Come up with engaging games
Sometimes usual games can get boring. Your kids won’t be interested in getting physically active anymore, especially if they already know how to play on a smartphone where the games are attractive-looking and interactive, but that’s when you need to cooperate with them. Look for new activities every day to keep them curious, for example:
- Monday you can have a running race
- Tuesday is the day for hula hoops
- Wednesday you can have a dancing session to their favourite songs
- Thursday you could go for a ride on your bicycles
- Friday you can ask them to help you with gardening
And for the weekends, when they have more free time, they can come up with original activities ideas that you can play together. Keeping them engaged and surprised when you can and be by their side when they’re not feeling like playing.
Teach them the importance of a healthy lifestyle
It’s important to take it easy and consider their personality. Avoid being too obsessed with physical activities, even though your intentions are good. Depending on their age, kids should exercise at least three times a week for at least one hour a day, but you need to alternate this interval depending on their health condition.
Teaching them about having a healthy lifestyle doesn’t mean imposing a way of living but showing them the fun side of these activities with long-term benefits. The first step to demonstrating this lifestyle’s importance is to be a model for them. If they see that you’re trying to be active when you get the chance and have fun sometimes, they’ll think it might be fun.
Kids are mirroring their surroundings, and if you’re subtly trying to help them in this direction, they’ll slowly incorporate these things into their daily activities without thinking they have to do it.
Another way of teaching them is to add new concepts every day regarding healthy living. For example, try explaining to them how muscles grow, why their heart starts beating faster when they are running or why they feel happy after having fun playing. If they’re starting to ask more questions, it means the conversation is interesting enough. Building a concept-based lifestyle will help them understand why it’s better to be active.
In the end, it’s important to have fun together and encourage your child to be creative and come up with new game ideas. Physical activity is meant for kids fitness that improves their body and mind; therefore, they’ll become healthy and happy adults.
