Too much screen time? Your kids don’t like sports?
Guess what? Kids DO like to run, move, and play, even if they don’t like the competition and intensity of sports.
How do you know?
Open the gate to your local playground, open the door to the classroom at pickup, open your back door, and what do kids do? They take off running and screaming in delight.
FACT: Kids choose outdoor play over screen time when given the option.
So what’s the best way to facilitate more outdoor play?
Consider the 3Rs:
REFRAME: Outdoor play as fun. Don’t scold about excessive screen time; instead, offer more outdoor playtime. And be sure you model what you want them to do: put down your phone and get outside!
REDESIGN: Change routines by purposefully making more opportunities for outdoor playtime. The more available it is, the more likely children will take advantage of it. Consider something as simple as stopping at a playground on the way home from school or an errand.
REDIRECT: Make it a family affair by refocusing family time into outdoor play time by taking a family bike ride or dog walk after dinner. Turn a regular walk into a scavenger hunt walk and see what you can find, or challenge your child to observe or uncover bugs or leaves of specific colors, sticks of a certain shape, something in nature that looks like something you would find at home, etc.
The most important thing you can do is start small, once a week. Do this regularly, and your new routine will be something your kids will not only crave but demand.
FACT: Sport is not for everyone, but physical fitness and physical activity are for everyone because we all have bodies. For children, particularly, moving their bodies regularly helps them not only build confidence in what their bodies can do, but it also builds a foundation for long-term physical activity that sets them up for a lifetime of health and wellness.
But guess what else? Their brains NEED their bodies to be strong for school: a weak body cannot sit comfortably in a chair, hold a book to read, or move and control a pencil with confidence. So school is harder than it should be. Their brains NEED their bodies to move so their brains understand how to use their bodies for learning: to establish a focal point to keep letters still on the page, to understand force so pencil tips don’t break when writing, to establish motor patterns like rhythm, sequencing, and patterning that make learning to read, write, add, subtract, noodle out problems and think creatively easier. Their brains NEED their bodies to move because a lack of movement outside the classroom means their brains are going to make their bodies move inside the classroom, disrupting their learning and making school harder than it should be.
Remember: children cannot multitask, so when their brains are consumed with managing things like comfort, confidence, patterns, and sequences that should be happening in the background, their brains can’t learn new information. Moving in the form of play builds those strengths and skills so they CAN happen in the background and new learning can take place.
Playing outside is a win-win. It is the way Mother Nature designed us. Let’s lean into what she intended.
