Help Your Kids Get Moving

Much as the family dinner is one of the best ways to stay connected with your kids, being active together as a family provides an equally powerful bonding experience that can help your children be healthier. Nancy Zises, M.D., a board-certified pediatrician at Sutter’s Palo Alto Medical Foundation, explains that children who have fun running, playing, bicycling and practicing sports with their families are more likely to get adequate amounts of exercise both now and when they are grown up.

“Know that the best possible way to encourage your child to exercise is to set a good example yourself – your child wants to do and be like you,” Dr. Zises says. “Your level of activity will dictate how active he or she is now and will help your child establish healthy exercise habits for life.”

Exercise for Toddler

Toddlers are naturally very active – running, climbing, jumping, moving and exploring the world around them is what toddlers are all about. For young children, it’s more important to limit screen time (this includes anything with a screen such as the TV, computers and electronic devices such as video game players or phones), Dr. Zises says.

“Try not to use the TV as a babysitter,” she advises. “The more time your little one spends in front of the TV or another screen, the less time he or she is imagining, exploring and being active. Moving around and interacting with the world around them is what children this age should be doing and is critical to ensuring their healthy mental and physical development.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that children under 2 years old should not watch any TV at all. For children over 2 years old, screen time should be limited to less than two hours a day.

“Make sure that even as your child gets older, he or she does not have a TV in the bedroom and you set limits on screen time,” Dr. Zises says.

Exercise for School-Age Kids

Children typically have at least some recess and Physical Education (P.E.) time scheduled into every school day. However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control currently recommends that children and teens get at least 60 minutes of vigorous exercise per day. Since few schools are able to give kids a cumulative hour of exercise hard enough to raise the heart rate and cause sweating, most school age children need additional daily exercise outside of school.

“During the elementary school years is the perfect time to encourage your child to try some of the many sports options out there, such as organized team sports,” Dr. Zises says. “If your child is interested in a particular sport or team, let him or her try it out. If your child doesn’t like the sport, that’s fine, too. Try something else. Keep a mellow approach, don’t force it. Remain encouraging and suggest other options if the first one or two do not work out.”

Exercise for the Exercise Hater

Even with all the organized sport options out there for today’s school-age children, there are kids who do not like organized sports. That’s OK, Dr. Zises says. Explore other options for getting active. Some non-sport ideas from Dr. Zises for meeting daily and weekly exercise requirements include:

• Take a family walk together after dinner.
• Ride a bike (to school or for pleasure).
• Go for a weekend hike in the beautiful outdoors.
• Play pick-up sports. Call a friend or two who will kick a soccer ball, shoot some hoops or throw a Frisbee with you and your child.
• Go wall climbing at the gym.
• Try hula hooping, wave boarding or roller skating.
• Find out what classes friends are taking and join them. Children are more likely to want to try something new if they can do it with a friend.
• Get a family membership to a gym, especially if it offers classes like kickboxing, yoga or Pilates that your teenager may enjoy.

Exercise for Gamers

Parents often wonder if Wii games that children enjoy can count as exercise, but Dr. Zises is cautious about the idea of “gaming” your way to fitness.

“The Wii games may be billed as active but are often not so,” she says. “For example, for some games your child might still be sitting on the couch and only moving the hands or wrists. Remember, for something to be the type of exercise to keep you healthy, you need to sweat and elevate your heart rate. Try doing the Wii games with your child to see if they really qualify as exercise. And don’t forget to balance these games with the recommended amount of real exercise.”