5 Ways to Motivate Your Child to Exercise
Motivating your child to exercise can be very tricky and difficult especially when you’re competing for his time against sedentary activities like surfing the Internet, playing video games and watching TV shows. Plus, the daily stresses in school, peers and family life also helps them in making excuses to not be active. Still, you can change all this by taking charge of your child’s life and by using these motivating ways to get them off the couch and exercise.
- Explain the Importance of Exercising. A good way to get them to exercise is by explaining its importance to them. Explain how performing even light workout routines can shave extra pounds off their body, increase their energy, improve their athleticism and make concentrating at school a lot easier.
- Make Working Out a Group Activity. Turning exercise into a group activity is another great way to motivate your couch kid to be active. Encourage him to bring his friends along and exercise with him. Doing this will help in establishing good exercise habits in him. If you want, you can also get your family involved in this healthy lifestyle to establish good exercise habits not just in your child but in each member of the family.
- Incorporate Fun Activities With Exercising. Make your child more motivated to exercise by getting him involved in fun activities, such as karate classes or bike riding. You can also get him moving by frequently visiting zoos or nature parks, since this activity involves a lot of physical exercise.
- Set up a Weekly Family Sports Night. One good way to provide physical activity not just for your child, but for the entire family is by trying several types of sports like croquet, volleyball, badminton, basketball, or baseball. Make the activity fun by changing some of its rules or having shorter game times.
- Reward Your Child for Exercising. The best way to get a child moving is by giving them a reward. Your reward can be something as simple as treating him to a low-fat yogurt after a basketball game, or you can go big by visiting his favourite amusement park over the weekend. Also, consider rewarding your child with items that will help him in fitness quest like new fitness shoes, or any fitness gear to make him want to exercise more.
Encouraging your child to be active and exercise can be very difficult nowadays, but by making the activity fun and enticing to them, you’ll surely be able to get you couch potato moving sooner than you think.
