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How to keep your kids from driving you insane this summer!” The smart mom's survival guide to getting kids off the couch and moving their body.

By Kristin Goodenough

Do you have kids? I’ve got 3 beautiful kids. Zack is 13 and believes the best form of exercise is sitting on the couch exercising his hands playing video games. His brother Alex (11) feels the same way. At 8 years old my youngest child, Mckenzie thankfully isn’t sitting on the couch next to the boys but isn’t one for being active unless it is an organized activity or group class.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my kids but they drive me insane! I send them outside to swing on the swings. I look out the window and see them sitting there poking one another and laughing (not swinging). I encourage them to go outside and jump on the trampoline. I go outside and see them either laying on the trampoline resting (not jumping) or “ninja kicking” one another until someone gets hurt, the jumping stops and they need to go inside and “rest”. Swimming in the pool is just as frustrating. Instead of swimming and diving they are “floating” in the water, again, poking one another until someone gets hurt.

As a mother AND a personal trainer it is shocking to me to see the “couch potato” in my children. How could they NOT want to go outside and play? My entire childhood was spent outside roller skating, taking long walks, playing basketball, swimming, jumping rope and riding my bike. I was always on the go.

When I was a kid my siblings and I were always outside playing with our friends. Climbing trees, roaming the creek, playing baseball and enjoying a good game of “cops and robbers” at night. It was so much fun! My mom never once had to encourage us to play, we just did. We were kids, that was our job and we were very happy to do it.

But times are different now. Video games and T.V. tend to be the main source of entertainment for kids and because of this, kids are spending less time playing (moving their bodies) and more time sitting on the couch. I swear, sometimes I look at my precious boys and see 45 year old men instead of little boys. Scary!

Now that summer is fast approaching I admit that I am a bit freaked out knowing that I have almost 3 months of kid frustration ahead of me. After talking with my friends, boot campers and personal training clients most of us are a little worried about how we will keep the kids occupied and “out of our hair.” Most of the moms are concerned because they too have a hard time getting their kids more active and do not know how to make much needed changes in their home.

This article is being written as a way to help moms every where create a healthier, more active lifestyle for their children. My mission: to get ALL kids off of the couch and moving their body. For kids like mine it has been a long process of figuring out how to “change their evil ways”. I consider our family a work in progress, my personal “guinea pigs” or “test subjects”. I have tried many things and am happy to have actually found several “tricks” that have worked. All kids are different but I am happy to report that I have made progress in our home and have shared some of my tips to other moms who have had great success with their kids as well.

Tips for getting your kids off the couch and moving:

  1. It must be fun! If it isn’t fun they will NOT do it. Remember, mom fun and kid fun are usually different. Find out what is fun to THEM.

  2. Bring on the toys. Kids have a natural curiosity and are drawn to toys. The following are some suggestions:

    • Provide balls of all sizes. They make some really cool extra large size exercise balls that have a fabric covering over the plastic ball for protection. These are great for kicking, throwing and chasing after.
    • Toss a large exercise ball in the pool to throw around. Mom and kids will have a blast throwing it around and get a great workout.
    • Jump ropes are great fun. Don’t forget to purchase both short and long ropes. Encourage your kids to grab some neighborhood friends, bring the boom box outside with some great music pumping and watch those kids jump like crazy.
    • Water guns are a summer must have for every child. Make sure to send them out with “rules of engagement” (no shooting at anyone’s face or “taking out an eyeball”), a water gun and a shield for protection. For a shield you can use a cardboard box or a trash can lid, anything convenient. Better yet, forget the shields and just run for it!

  3. Introduce your kids to their new best buddy, the pedometer. My kids love video games. So what I did was require them to “earn” their video game time. For instance 30 minutes of video game playing would require my kids to wear their pedometer and walk 15,000 steps. If they didn’t move they wouldn’t get any steps which would result in no video game playing.

    They went nuts with this. I had never seen my kids move so much. They were very motivated to move because they wanted to reach the magic number and earn their time. But it got better. They wanted more time playing video games. Realizing that 15,000 steps was a lot of steps and difficult to do we decided that a goal of 20,000 steps would earn them 1 hour of video game playing. They wanted to play more so they moved like crazy to get those steps in.

    You can substitute in any suitable reward for your child. Find whatever pushes your child’s buttons and use that to motivate them.

  4. Take a hike! Go explore with your kids. Pack a lunch and make a day of it. Kids are natural explorers and love discovering new places. I make a game with my daughter when she starts to get tired and cranky. We start looking for hidden treasures like cardinals (her favorite bird), wild flowers, squirrels or turtles. She loves it and distracts her enough to continue on and enjoy the hike.

  5. Slip and slide. Find a water park and spend the day swimming, climbing stairs, running, going down slides and having a blast with your kids. My husband took the kids on Saturday (an early Mother’s Day present to me) and my kids didn’t stop moving the entire 6 hours at the park. They had a blast and didn’t want to leave.

  6. Turn your trampoline into a stage. We discovered the key to trampoline jumping was making it an evening event. We put a “shop light” on the top of the enclosure so that the entire trampoline looked like it had a spotlight shining down on it. We then put on our kids favorite music and watched as the kids “performed” for us. They had so much fun they jumped non stop for at least 2 hours and slept really good that night.

  7. Have a dance Party. Put on some great music and let the kids “break it down”. Form a circle and let each kid get the chance to show off their best moves. This is great for mom too so don’t be afraid to join in!

  8. Make a backyard boot camp and invite the friends over. Create an obstacle course and provide a stopwatch so that they can time themselves running through the course. The stopwatch helps motivate the kids to beat their time each time out.

Equipment you can use includes:

Incorporate your environment. Use:

Sample kid friendly obstacle course:

  1. 10 Push ups
  2. 10 Jump rope
  3. 10 Bear crawl
  4. 10 Jumping Jacks
  5. 10 Crab Walk
  6. 10 Hula hoop
  7. 10 Skips
  8. Dribble a basketball and run from cone to cone

Repeat and time how long it takes.

Organize a game of baseball done boot camp style. Invite the neighborhood kids over and form two teams. Create a baseball diamond. You can use orange cones or sidewalk chalk to mark the bases. This is an individual effort so the kids can go at their own pace.

This is how to play:

Realizing that video games are very important to my kids my husband and I decided that if they were going to play them then we would #1, limit their time playing to 1 hour and #2 we would change the way they played their games. The “eye toy,” Wii, and Dance Dance Revolution are great ways to sneak some exercise in while they play. My kids SWEAT now when they play their video games. That makes me REALLY happy!

Finally, if you really are serious about getting your kids moving then move WITH them. Kids are more likely to take a walk if they know that YOU are going with them. My son loves getting up at 5:30a.m. to ride his bike with me when I run. We both get our exercise and enjoy some quality bonding time. Even at this early hour it is not uncommon to see other parents running with their children riding their bikes, scooters or running alongside them. Very cool!

About the Author:

Kristin Goodenough is an A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer in McKinney, TX. She owns the Collin County Adventure Boot and specializes in women's only fitness programs. Visit her website at www.bootcamp4women.com.