Sedentary behavior in children carries a lifetime risk for conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and cardiovascular diseases. Encouraging physical activity for children from an early age is essential to ensuring healthier futures for our children.
Note: This article is part of our archival content and belongs to a previous phase of our publication. Amaranth Magazine is now a dedicated literary magazine.
Why Physical Activity Matters for Children
Physical activity offers numerous benefits to children, ensuring not just healthy physical selves but also healthy mental and emotional development. Among the notable advantages are:
- Positive Effects on Cardiovascular Health: It strengthens the heart and promotes good circulation.
- Weight Management: It keeps you at the right weight and avoids obesity.
- Reduced risk of chronic diseases: It avoids the development of diabetes and hypertension.
- Mental Well-being Outcomes: It improves mood, reduces stress levels, and thus enables better mental health.
- Avoidance of Substance Use: It reduces the risk of smoked drugs and substance use, including alcohol and drugs.
Building regular physical activity into the routine of a child lays the foundation for a lifetime of health. Active children are more likely to become adults who enjoy increased energy, better bone health, and greater strength, balance, and coordination as they age.
How Much Physical Activity Is Enough for Children?
The recommended amount of physical activity for the promotion of health in schoolchildren and adolescents aged 5 to 17 years is at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity. This should be progressive, increasing by 5 to 10 minutes every few weeks. It is also important to limit the time spent in sedentary activities, such as watching TV or playing video games, to less than 2 hours per day.
How to Encourage Our Kids to Get More Physical Activity
Physical activity does not necessarily need to come from organized sports. Other forms of physical activity throughout daily life can count, such as walking the family dog, playing outside, or even yard work and helping around the house. Here are some effective ways of promoting physical activity in children: it encourages general healthy habits.
- Walk or bike to school: Encourage your child to engage in active transportation to and from school instead of riding the bus or getting a ride.
- Be active at home: Take time each day after school to play actively or exercise.
- Mix it up: Try to balance times between moderate activities like walking, and vigorous activities like soccer, running or tag.
- Play together: Take part in things together as a family, such as going for walks, bike riding or skating.
- Free play: Let there also be unstructured creative free play-such as building a snowman or playing tag-along with organized sports, such as swimming or gymnastics.
Types of Physical Activity for Children and Teens (Ages 5-18)
Children and teens need two kinds of physical activities each week to reach the 60-minute goal:
- Aerobic activities: To develop heart and lung health.
- Strengthening activities: To build muscle, bone density and motor skills.
Active time should be balanced with rest to avoid fatigue. Children and teens also should not spend too much time being sedentary (sitting or lying down).
Examples of Moderate-Intensity Activities
Moderate-intensity activities increase heart rate and cause breathing to become harder, but someone still can carry on a conversation. Examples include:
- Walking to school or walking the dog.
- Playground games such as tag.
- Physical education class.
- Swimming, jumping rope, or bicycling.
- Dancing or skateboarding.
Muscle and Bone-Strengthening Activities
Strengthening exercises are particularly important because they help develop a child’s muscles and bones. Examples include:
- Gymnastics, martial arts, or soccer.
- Jumping, climbing, or swinging on playground equipment.
- Sit-ups, push-ups, or resistance training for older children and teens.
To promote injury-free physical exertion by children, it is necessary to rely on a physician where applicable. It might be healthier to ease the child into a new physical activity before making it vigorous. As in when using helmets for cycling, for example, padded shorts etc. are used to alleviate the discomfort which can come from learning how to ice skate because of all the falling. Teenagers ought to be monitored while lifting objects for the purpose of resistance training to prevent any possible muscle strain.
Physical Activity Tips for Children (Ages 5-11)
The ease for children to pick up healthy habits in the childhood extends to the adult age as well and this makes it necessary to nurture healthy patterns from a tender age. A good way to do this is to subsume the passive time with recreational or sporting activities. When at school, children should be persuaded to engage in physical activities during lessons, for it has shown to be effective. Practicing school sports at the out of class hours organizes play structure in a way children are taught on how to be active through training.
When children are accompanied at parks and playgrounds, they get a chance to be busy and to know their surrounding. Also, any spot shivering with afterschool activities despite being quite not ideal, serves as a constant reminder that there are countless steps one can always take to achieve a healthy living. In this way and through these suggestions, parents can be supportive of their children in the formation of such behaviors that will encourage the performance of regular physical exercises, and the utmost care for one’s health.
The Importance of Vigorous-Intensity Activities for Children
Children’s physical fitness plans should always include workouts to increase heart rate to a level above what is perceivable as normal which also does not promote coherent speech without running out of breath. Examples of this intervention include running, playing basketball, soccer, and mountain ski. Also the importance of encouraging kids to involve themselves in perform two three aerobic activities that assist in boosting cardiovascular rate and have impact endurance of the body as well increase its strength is very important. When more of these types of activities are included with the cardiovascular exercise, including resistance exercises, the child develops a better fitness program that is helpful to the health and body stress that they will stand today.
After-School Physical Activity
Afterschool is a great opportunity for kids to be active. Instead of watching TV or playing video games, encourage joining active programs or find creative ways to be active on the way home from school.
Generally, active children and adolescents have higher overall physical fitness, healthier cholesterol levels, and better mental health. Reduced sedentary behavior lessens the risk for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and high blood pressure. Encouraging physical activity among children is a critical component of lifelong healthy behavior.
Fostering physical activity for children is crucial not just for the sake of chronic diseases since it ensures that children develop a penchant for physical activity that is long term. As a result, physical activity is included in the regular non-stop mode of making our children build habits which keep the body, mind, and soul healthy. It does not matter whether efforts are made in the form of games, plays, walks, hikes or family activities expanding a healthy potential for a sustainable future for the children is imperative. We challenge everyone to play their part and make this happen. Let’s do it for generation Y. How about they too experience the immense joys of a physically active life.
References:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-625-x/2019001/article/00003-eng.htm
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/physical-activity-tips-children-5-11-years.html
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/physical-activity-guidelines-children-and-young-people/
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/being-active/children-physical-activity.html
