Children and youth benefit physically and mentally from participating in physical activity on a regular basis. Unfortunately, many of them don’t because the parents don’t care or because they don’t like it. Positive experiences associated with physical activity at an early age also help lay the foundation for people to remain physically active throughout their lives.
Regular physical activity in childhood and adolescence improves strength and endurance, contributes to the formation of healthy bones and muscles, promotes weight control, reduces anxiety and stress, increases self-esteem, and can improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Although physical activity is very positive for the health of all people, it is much more so for children and young people. Good habits are acquired from childhood, so it is necessary to stimulate them from an early age. We want to help you and teach you how to encourage physical activity in childhood and adolescence.
Physical activity also helps to improve and strengthen relationships with other children or adolescents, to form groups of friends, to share, in addition to having a moment and a space to relax and have fun in a healthy way.
What do you need to promote physical activity in childhood and adolescence?
- Time to accompany your children in sports activities
- Encourage them from a young age with outdoor games.
- Constance
Instructions to encourage physical activity in childhood and adolescence
- The main thing is that children or adolescents find the sport they really like, and for this reason parents have to accept that they abandon one activity and change it for another during childhood and adolescence. They need to know the different sports and physical activities to be able to choose. A child forced to do the sport that his father likes will surely abandon him at some point.
- If we want to promote sport and physical exercise, one way to achieve this is by accompanying them, either by sharing that sport, attending their training sessions, matches or competitions.
- Another way to promote sports is by sharing different physical activities so that they exercise their bodies and have fun at the same time. For example, the child can practice a sport during the week and go out on Sundays with his father to ride a bicycle.
- Individual sports, such as tennis, provide great physical benefits to children or adolescents, but group sports provide much more because they force them to work and make an effort for the group or team, learning to share and not be individualistic.
- We must also give greater importance to the fact of participating than to winning, so as not to encourage negative competition. Although it is important to win, it is more important to have participated and to have made an effort to win or reach the goal.
- It is very appropriate for children and adolescents to have active play time and free time to play and have fun; this is another factor that will make them take it with more enthusiasm. In this way, they will combine what they like best with other forms of physical activity and have even more fun.
- Outdoor leisure activities will also be a good way to encourage children and young people to move, like so many other things, sports are learned by playing.
Tips to encourage physical activity in childhood and adolescence
- Accompany your children to do physical activities.
- If you can’t be there all the time during the training, you can arrive a little earlier to look for him so that he feels that you are interested.
- Listen carefully when he tells you about his experiences in the game, give him feedback, and share with him in some way.