Have you ever noticed the wonder of life children possess? Their zest for life is exilerating. They go into new adventures for the most part without fear, expecting greatness. Over time though, they can lose that zest to hearing lots of “No’s” or having a terrible teacher/coach get in the way.
When it comes to exercise experiences, children need positive experiences in order to associate it with positive things. According to the World Health Organization, as of 2016 over 45 million children are overweight or obese worldwide. Over half of all children under 5 have lived in Asia and one quarter lived in Africa.
Parents, teachers and coaches alike are competing with gaming consoles, the food industry, to get kids moving and healthy. Children and young adults need to have more positive experiences to move their bodies, get outdoors, and be healthy. As we know, children grow into teens, then young adults and then adults. These behaviors learned when young start to permeate into adulthood. A heavier body is more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, cancer, miss more work, have more medical bills, and possible death by coronary heart disease than a healthy weighted individual.
I am so passionate about our children because as a former physical education teacher K-12th grade, I saw just how overweight and under-moving our children really are. I had the opportunity to teach some curriculum from a Pell Grant educating on the 5 Components of Fitness as well as measure BMI for a few years. Most of the children I worked with lived in a low income school district in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
The following blog includes need to know information if you work with children, have children of your own, or know someone that is a parent of young children. I include what science tells us, my personal experience and also try to lighten the convo with some fun Giphys and personal pics. If you stay to the end, you’ll hear about a program that I’m really proud to share.
Enjoy!
#1 Early experiences with anything can make or break our decision to continue. ⠀
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In psychology we call them mastery experiences. If you have a family and want your kids to be healthy well into their adulthood, be the example and try different experiences with them. ⠀
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Check out this article for more info on Mastery Experiences and how to drive positive behavior.
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#2 Spend Time With Resourceful People
Mom enrolled us at the YMCA when I was a kid.⠀For those of you who don’t know what that is, its a non-profit gym for kids and adults that has a gymnasium, gymnastics, pool, fitness classes, weights, and fun youth activities on the weekends to keep us out of trouble. They have programs for low income families because the philosophy of YMCA is that everyone should be able to have a safe place to exercise and participate in sports.
It was free for us because mom volunteered to teach swimming fitness classes. She told me she didn’t know how but she learned so we could have positive experiences about being healthy. ⠀
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You see we lived off of dad’s single income and he was in sales so that was a lot of pressure for the fam to not be big spenders. ⠀
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Mom did her part to help us stay active and socialize with other kids without adding a financial burden to the fam.⠀
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Do you know anyone like that? Share this post with them.
#3 Find Activities To Do Outdoors.
It is Incredible For mental health For adults and kids alike⠀
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Look for parks and recreation centers in your area, most are free or cheap to visit. ⠀
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If there is a parking fee, grab a friend or two and ask to split the cost. Your kids will thank you when they’re older. ⠀
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Believe me, I HATED hikes 🥾.⠀
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Mostly because dad would say something like, “you’re going to like hiking whether your like it or not” (he didn’t have training in positive behavior change 🤣).⠀
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I am so grateful now that he strongly encouraged us to hike because now I have a strong appreciation for the outdoors.⠀
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There is also a lot of science that backs up the mental health benefits of working out in the elements.⠀Check out this article for the benefits by Dr. Mackenzie.
#4 Find Unique Places To Workout & Focus On Wellness
Cemeteries can have more than 1 purpose. Mom would take us on walks to the local cemetery when money was really tight. We were homeschooled after all. We’d go and do a math lesson by figuring out how old the person was when they passed away.
Kind of … interesting when I tell people that. LOL 😆. However, I think it helped me have a healthy association with cemeteries and that death is a natural part of life (and math is in everything haha) right Alice? ⠀
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The usual ones we’d find were 70-80 years old. Occasionally, we’d find one that was a child or teen. That always made me sad then we’d have conversations about what might have happened and how to prevent it from happening to us. Who knew a cemetery, a little walking, and some math could strike up healthy family conversations?⠀
#5 The Move Happy Facilitator Program© Includes Workouts Safe For Kids
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Super excited & proud to share my 16-week program with you! It is something I actually facilitated to my former patients in a psychiatric hospital.⠀
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We ran the program 4 days a week and each week included a topic like how I share with you every week! All weekly topics were related to happiness from what I researched⠀
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I created a psychological questionnaire to measure happiness (simple 1-pager) & a fitness questionnaire to measure fitness so you and your participants can track progress throughout.⠀
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My patients improved for the most part in both areas consistently and spread news about the group around the hospital 💜 ⠀
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Each day includes:⠀
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Journaling 📓 (pre-designed questions I created)⠀
Group Discussion of the daily topic (a subtopic of the weekly)⠀
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Workouts 🏋️♀️ With Minimal Equipment that are safe for all ages⠀
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I recreated the workouts via video example (demo not full) so you don’t have to be a fitness expert to run the program. Although I worked with adults on this program, my experience with K-12 students lets me know these workouts are safe and effective to practice with young students as well. ⠀
To order go here.
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PS: Thank you in advance for your support 🙏
Move Happy® Updates
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The Move Happy® World Tour is underway soon! We’re connecting with local businesses to sponsor the event to lower the cost of tickets and cover the building rental fees. If you’re a business owner and you’d like to support this mental health event, feel free to email me. We will announce all sponsors in the advertising campaign as well as throughout the event. If you’re not a business owner but want to support the event donate any amount here. Please email me for recognition at the event your business details and also to help me keep track for my future accountant so they don’t totally hate me as PayPal only allows me to have 1 account for sales as well as donations 😆.
So there you have it folks. Children learn from watching what adults and their friends do. If they see you sitting most of the day, not enjoying your life, that’s probably how they’ll end up as well. However, if they see you moving and having a spectacular life full of excitement, they may want to join in as well. We cannot make guarantees for what children want or don’t want to do. However, if we surround them with enough positive experiences to allow them to move, they’re more likely going to want to move into adulthood. Remember we were all children once. It’s time we payback to the generation before us what was shown to us. Move, move more, move again.
PS: Don’t forget to tell someone you love them today.
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