The best exercise for your kids: How to raise healthy humans
In the digital age of our society, you as a parent probably face total confusion when attempting to navigate the challenges of parenthood. What sources can you rely on to obtain relevant and accurate knowledge regarding childrearing?
Maybe you simply click the first Google listing and call it good. Or maybe you spend countless, exhausting hours perusing the internet in search of answers that don’t seem to exist.
As a pediatric Doctor of Physical Therapy, here are the top two questions I’ve had parents ask me: “How much exercise should my child get? What type of exercise should my child do?”
While these questions are quite generic, my answers are not. I’ll tell you my answers and explain why you need to understand my reasoning. As a conscientious parent, you must know! The health of your kids now and into the future depends on your ability to understand and implement these physical activity practices.
“How much exercise should my child get?”
Every day. As much as they can!
“What type of exercise should my child do?”
Anything and everything. Whatever he or she enjoys!
Every child is unique in his or her needs. Especially if I see a child for physical therapy services, skilled and targeted interventions will look different for each kiddo. But ultimately, most children just need to be consistently moving! In this post, I’ll explain to you why.
To be honest, when I was a new physical therapist, I was initially baffled by these kinds of questions from parents. The answers seemed so obvious to me. I do not intend to shame any parent, if you have these same questions.
Rather, it took humility on my part to step down from the perspective of my professional expertise and my life experiences as a high level athlete, to see that many parents struggle to appreciate and implement these critical, yet simple health practices for their children.
Therefore, I’m so honored to be able to shed light on these questions about physical activity practices for your family today!
“How much exercise should my child get?”
Your child should get physical activity every single day!
I highly encourage part of this daily exercise to be outside each day. If the day is blistering hot, take them to a pool or let them run through the sprinkler. If the day is freezing cold, bundle them up and allow them to frolic through the snow or build a snowman. Most kids aren’t as sensitive to the weather as adults are. Try not to project your own misgivings about the temperature onto your children.
Maybe your kids don’t want to go outside. Being indoors can confine them to limiting thought processes. Set a household expectation that daily outdoor play time will occur. Fresh air, sun, and nature provide invaluable stimulation for your kid. This is Mother Earth’s limitless playground.
Whether your child is playing indoors or outdoors, your goals should be for them to move as long as they can and as frequently as possible. Let them play until they are exhausted, which is especially helpful before nap or bed time. Allow them ample opportunities to exercise throughout the day, not just isolated to one bout.
The problem with our modern school system is that children are deprived of so much precious time to move and play. Recess time is slowly being cut in lieu of classroom drills and testing. Schoolchildren are forced to sit (though some schools fortunately offer standing desks) for the majority of the day. So it’s not surprising that rates of obesity, behavior disorders, and social emotional disorders among kids are rapidly rising!
“What types of exercise should my child do?”
Your child should play in any way and try everything possible!
Unless your child has a restrictive medical condition, they really have no limitations. Ultimately, the types of physical activities that your child should participate in include whatever is enjoyable or fun!
Unstructured play for very young kids is far more important than it is for pre-teens. Young kids are much better at it too because their imaginative capacity is much greater. No matter their age, unstructured play is important to help kids foster creativity and intrinsic motivation.
This intrinsic motivation is important for your child to cultivate so that they can develop a healthy relationship with themselves. Intrinsic motivation is the drive to engage in an activity based on personal interest or satisfaction, as opposed to being based on an outside source or consequence.
For a kid, this can look like doing a sport because they love it, not because their parent loves it. Supporting, encouraging, and motivating your kid is paramount in helping them to establish a healthy relationship with physical activity. But be wary to not project your expectations upon your child’s performance nor your own biases (negative or positive) upon your child’s experience.
Your child will also benefit from participating in organized sports. For kids under 7 years, participating in an organized sport 1-2 times per week positively influences many health aspects, including physical, psychological, and social-emotional benefits.
The frequency of organized sports participation can increase with age, sometimes children 7 years old participating 3 times per week. This is acceptable as long as your child is doing two different sports. You want to make sure your child doesn’t feel spread too thin with too many sports activities while also doesn’t experience burnout with too much time doing one sport.
Sports specialization at early ages brings additional risks, which looks like training one sport exclusively usually year round, while forgoing other sports. More research is coming out on youth sports specialization and the risks it brings with overtraining injuries, pressure, and stress.
My suggestion would be to keep your child involved in a variety of sports for as long as possible. I grew up as a competitive gymnast. I stopped participating in other sports at 7 years old because I loved gymnastics so much and didn’t want to do any other sports. You may feel this pressure from your child to specialize, and that’s ok. Just continue to provide other opportunities to help them find balance in life.
Keep in mind that organized sport usually isn’t a sufficient quantity of time for your child to meet the minimum requirements for physical activity. Dropping your kid off at soccer practice once per week for an hour will not suffice. Remember, your child needs to be moving every single day throughout the day!
If you can’t afford to pay for organized sports for your child, that is okay too! Many families are struggling financially right now. And if you have multiple children, the cost of sports can add up quickly. If you can’t afford to pay for soccer league, have your children organize their own group. Send them to the park with their friends to play soccer. They will play longer and harder than they would in an organized practice anyway!
How to select physical activities or sports for your child:
What’s the best way for you to decide which exercise your child should do? Let’s break it down.
Are you looking for your child to participate in unstructured or structured play?
With unstructured play, your decisions are simple. In fact, your decisions are non-existent. You just need to provide the time and opportunities. Your child will decide the rest, hence the term “unstructured”. Unstructured play is inherently the exploration of your child. They can do whatever they want, however they like. Your kid does all the work. Your child’s job in life is TO PLAY. So let them do what they know best!
With structured play, your decisions get more complicated because more variables are at play. Physical activities should provide your child with variety yet consistency, challenge yet reward, and structure yet freedom. But ultimately, the decisions should come back to your kid. If they enjoy the activity or sport, let them do it!
Growing up, my siblings and I had the privilege to try many activities. My parents were very active, so my family tried nearly everything at least once! Sometimes it was simply taking tennis rackets to the courts just to run and hit the ball around, and other times it was formal tennis lessons.
My parents also required my siblings and me to always be involved in at least one sport. I had gymnastics, my older sister did martial arts, and my two younger siblings bounced between recreational and school sports. I’m so grateful for my parents’ efforts to expose us to so many things! Yet at the same time, they respected my devotion to and love for my favorite sport of gymnastics.
I hope you find this blog post helpful! I’m confident you can take this information and run with it! If you seek further guidance or struggle with implementing changes around exercise for your child, please reach out to me via email at trinumhealth@gmail.com.
In my next blog post, I’ll dive into the health benefits of exercise for children and how you can establish good exercise habits for your family.
Disclaimer: This blog is intended for informational and educational purposes only and is not considered medical advice.
