Ideas for encouraging fitness - Parenting Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
When our oldest son was about one years old, I started doing some basic strength training, where I just give some resistance, you know, pushing in his arms gently back and forth, and then when he was, I don't know, three, four, five, six, seven years old, I would start wrestling with him. I would wrestle with him for maybe 15 to 30 minutes once or twice a week, and that seemed to be enough to give enough strength resistance to help his to strengthen, and he is very strong, and I do not believe it stunted his growth. If anything, I think it has helped encourage his growth. I think little kids can have like big boy muscles, like a five-year-old can have like pectoral and bicep muscles. I've seen it in our son, and I also like running to and from school with our son. It's really simple, it's only like half a mile, but doing it every day really helps him speed up.
Video 2 Transcript
We've never really had to encourage fitness at our home. We've always just had an active lifestyle. We have done things a little different than most. We did a lot of things mainstream until we began homeschooling our children 14 years ago. And then we eliminated a lot of team sports and things of that nature off our plate. We've always hiked and biked and fished and camped and been outdoors a lot. And so our children, we eat healthy, we are active. And so encouraging fitness has just been a natural part of our lifestyle, which we are grateful for. It's a little disconcerting seeing that a lot of children sit and don't do a lot. We've never brought in video games in our home and rarely sit and watch movies. So I think our busy lifestyle has been a great part of just staying active naturally and organically.
Video 3 Transcript
I created a workout that my kids love to do with me. It involves nursery rhymes and picking them up and doing the lyrics with them. It's on my blog, hollybrown.com slash 2020 slash 05 slash 21 slash mommy-and-i-get-stronger-together.html
Video 4 Transcript
I found being on a team was the best way to encourage fitness. Like, no kid is gonna want to just go work out on their own, but if they have a team and they have that support system, it's just gonna become that much better. So whether that's a summer league or in school, I would just say put them on something where they can be part of something. A team, for me that was swimming and I just loved it. I don't think you should force them into a sport that they don't like, then they're just gonna hate you for it and hate the sport. And so, you know, experiment, try out different sports, but the best way to encourage fitness is to get them doing something that they love.
Video 5 Transcript
I would say a really good way to encourage fitness in your family is to do things together as a family. Have them be part of your activities, whether that be hiking or going on a walk and looking for something. If you have little kids looking for, I don't know, leaves or flowers or plants or something, and then as you get older you can do the same thing but geared more towards their age. But I would just say doing things together as a family and having it be something that's fun with an end goal in mind of seeing something or finding something.
Video 6 Transcript
Take your children places where physical activity is natural and encouraged. Take them to the trampoline park or the park or make going for walks together as a family a habit.
Video 7 Transcript
One of the things I've done with my kids to encourage us to be more fit as a family is just to make it a family thing. So we love to hike, we love to go on bike rides, we go on walks, we go to the park and that's something I did a lot when they were kids. We would choose a different park. Every summer we'd make sure and go to multiple parks every week and we would let the kids just run around and play on the playground and we'd play with them and you know even just playing on a playground counts as exercise for a kid. So I think anything that you can find a way to be active, walking somewhere you might normally drive or taking the time to go outside and play instead of turning the tv on, anything that you can do together is going to help them to enjoy what they're doing.
