Keeping Kids Active at Home

The shelter-in-place order has made it a lot more difficult to keep our kids active. No school PE, no sports, and for a lot of kids, no friends they can play with “in real life.” This is especially true for families with only one child and no built-in, co-sheltering sibling playmates. Furthermore, the necessarily increased exposure to screens and accompanying un-structured solo time only exacerbates this trend, and only hardens resistance to parental pleas to “be active”.

There is ample evidence that daily activity is super important for the physical and mental health of all kids (for that matter their parents too), especially when formerly normal social routines are replaced by this odd new “normal”.

How do we keep our kids active while sheltering?

Some general tips: Parents are probably best off not using terms like “exercise”, “workout” and “active” as these can too-easily project an image of a boring, parent-led physical fitness session. Take a moment (not at the moment you have planned to start the activity), to explain the advantages of consistent activity as a way to achieve balance, especially now with shelter-in-place (noting this is especially true for adults!). Parents should also commit to participating in the family activity regime.

1. Integrate active time explicitly into the daily routine after discussion with your child. Avoid spuriously “adding it in” when you suddenly guiltily remember it in the midst of your insane Work From Home schedule.
2. If meeting resistance, consider some special small reward at the end of each session, every time.
3. If you have a child that is not physical by nature: start slow, have low expectations, and give lots of props after the fact.
4. Expect good days and bad days, and dont draw too much attention to it. It may take a couple of weeks to catch on, and you may need to insist on it, but consistency will pay off.
5. Avoid “this-for-that” transactions — “if you go out, you can play video games” — as it reinforces the negative perception around the desired activity. Emphasize activity as a normal balance to anyone’s day. (Side note: it’s the sitting all day that we all do that is actually so highly abnormal for human beings!)
6. Have your child prescribe you, the parent, activities as well, in the spirit of good fun and equality.
7. Use video conferencing to exercise with friends and extended family.
8. Review periodically with your child what worked and didn’t work. Keep looking for new fun activities on the web, especially if accompanied with a video tutorial.

Specific Ideas:

1. Bubble popping contest, even better done in two teams. Blow bubbles, see who can pop all their bubbles first.
2. Water fight, even better if any kind of larger area with trees available for cover, to encourage running
3. Dance party three times a week, integrate themes, decorations, lights. Ditto for Karaoke.
4. The child can create videologs of a week’s activity, most smart phones can readily capture and edit high quality video
5. Dinner pizza picnic and tag/soccer/football/wiffle ball/frisbee scrimmage in your yard or any park that is open, once per wk on a specified day.
6. Create weekly physical challenges (each family member taking turns to make them), with the winner getting to pick out a treat for the family.
7. Track family success on a chart, with a fun family reward for achieving a consistency goal.
8. Install any of the apps listed below, and give it a try for a week or two.
9. Integrate short bursts of activity into academics, as short breaks during a given subject.
10. Conversely, integrate entertaining bits of academic work into walks or scavenger hunts, eg plant identification, navigation, counting games, photography.
11. Get simple exercise bands and create light resistance and body weight circuits. Use notecards, each with an exercise, to scramble the circuit of the week.
12. Integrate music with any and all activities, to increase the fun.
13. Gardening, including random digging, can really be a workout!
14. Give older children more and more independence to pick and perform their activities, avoid hovering or checking-in afterwards, just trust them to do it.
15. Teens can benefit tremendously from consistent, appropriately-distanced outdoor activities with a single friend: bike riding, walking, SEPARATE from parents and family. Because of teen inertia, you may need to initiate this with other parents, but be sure to give them space during the activity. This will recharge your teen for work and life at home.

Daily physical activity is super important for your child, and can yield great benefits for the family as a whole.

Great job for implementing any activity plan for your child!

Further Information:

Recommendations for activities from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

Apps that encourage fun activity:

Pokemon Go: the classic, still fun

Zombies Run: probably for older kids, encourages running, including a fun chase by zombies

Sworkit Kids: kids version of popular fitness app

Geocaching: find community-hidden treasures all over the world

GoGo Yoga for Kids: speaks for itself

Just Dance Now: dance party as workout

GoNoodle Kids: variety of activities for school age kids

Great child health information website (healthychildren.org) from AAP, includes a lot of COVID specific information

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