Exercise is one of the hardest things to get passionate about, and it can be even harder to get your kids involved. You have to make sure that health and fitness are priorities for the family as a whole. And the way to do that is to make sure you come up with ways of exercising with your kids. This is something a lot of parents struggle with, and rarely keep up with.
You’ve got to think about how you can get your kids motivated to want to exercise. This is something people have spent years trying to get right. It’s so difficult to motivate children and get them interested in things they may not want to do. So, here are some of the ways you can exercise with your children that will be more likely to make them want to get involved.
Let Them Choose
Kids like to think they’re in charge. They like to come up with things to do that are their ideas. So you can use this to your advantage. What you need to do is let the children choose what sort of exercise they want to do. Maybe you can give them a list to choose from? Let them take it in turns to choose what sort of exercise you will all be doing that day. If you do this, they will be more engaged in the exercise and fitness regime, and more likely to want to do it. And it will be good to have an array of different choices and ideas. One might pick swimming; another may choose bike riding. These are all valuable ways of keeping fit, and ensuring the kids are more motivated and excited about it.
Tell Them It’s a Family Project
When you are a parent, your children want to spend time with you. They get excited by the prospect of hanging out with mom or dad or both! And they will often want to do things with you and help you out. This desire to be involved is something else you can use to your advantage. So, you can make the kids aware that exercising together is like a family project. If you put it like this, then you will entice and attract the kids to want to get involved. This is a good way of fooling them into exercising without them realizing. They may not have an interest in exercise, and that’s why you need to make it seem like an enticing proposition for them.
Play Games
What’s the one thing children love above anything else? Games! And you can encourage them to exercise through playing games. Now, there are a number of choices here, so you have some variety. If you want to play some sport, you could use Fungo bats for a bit of baseball action. Or, if you want to combine physical and virtual, you might consider using the Nintendo Wii. This has plenty of options that will allow you and the kids to get fit via video games.
Exercising with the kids, and sticking with it, is an important part of family bonding and will help you to get healthier together. It’s something that you need to try to come up with ideas for. Use the suggestions above to get the kids more excited about fitness and exercise.
