Online Writing by Fran Aslam

Optimal Health for Children Requires Exercise

And Active Play

Active Play for Optimal Health

 Regular exercise and active play is important for the healthy development of a child from infancy to becoming an adult. According to American physical activity guidelines an hour of minimum physical activity every day is very important for a infant development. Exercise provides lots of valuable benefits to children adults and seniors. Our main focus is children.

Once you have introduced an active lifestyle to the child, activity becomes part of every day life and adds much more health fitness exercise to the body than you can think. Where as all day in the play pan as a toddler, watching TV most of the day, playing other still games and sitting down brings negative results and does not burn the food calories. These calories pile up on the body and makes children overweight. Once this is not noticed overweight turns into obese kids. Exercise and active play has lots and lots of benefits.

1.  Exercise and free play creates a healthy lifestyle that can not be maintained with anything else even in infancy and childhood. It is the combination of physical exercise and nutritional content of the food that interacts together to create this optimal health.

2.  Nutritional food values alone can not reach to the excellence of health alone. Exercise along with healthy eating habits turn into optimal health.

3.  Exercise eliminates risk of junk food with empty calories by burning these calories, instead of piling up on the body in the form of fat, reducing the physical peak performances.

4.  It reduces the risk of heart disease like cardiovascular problems, blood pressure and diabetes 2.

6.  Physical activity also helps to make strong muscles bones and joints and maintaining a normal body weight weight.

7.  Children are able to sleep better cry less and have less stress, once they are doing structured or unstructured exercise every day.

Still kids spend lot of time Watching TV, playing with the computer games emailing and tweeting. According to the latest statics a child consumes almost five and a half hours every day sitting down and playing. This ignorance to activity causes health problems and:

•  Number of overweight children and obesity is increasing on an alarming rate.
•  Children are getting sick with type 2 diabetes, asthma, sleep apnea and certain type of cancers, heart disease simply because they are not active.

Playing and walking Exercise

Exercise for Toddlers

As a toddler a child lears to walk and run at an advanced level, and his gross motor skill and small motor skills are very active to learn what everyone is doing, therefore, at this age child naturally walks a lot. Touches everything to know and use it like elders. Make sure to childproof the area where your toddler stays or the whole house. Let them have their free play in a child safe environment, where there is no glass around to throw, or pull, no furniture with sharp corners and softer toys and easy to play things. Make sure that the child has played actively fast for an hour and a half every day. In order to make the exercise effective for him, you can use 50% of the time for unstructured activity and the rest for structured exercise. Running, three wheeler bike, manual driving toy car, swimming lessons for kids, walking exercise a block with you are good examples for this kind of exercise.

You will see that after the exercise, the toddler will sleep longer and will behave very happy and calm, will not find a reason to cry.

Physical activity for 4-6 year old

At this age child becomes more confident. Boys/girls feel they can walk and run, they start reading and seeing pictures with you, watch some TV and likes to amuse elders with cute little activities. Child’s motor skills are developed and at theexercise span increases. Organized sport yoga, rock climbing wall lessons, gym for kids are good options for exercise. Park district, YMCA membership for kids activities, YWCA programs, and some private activity centers are good to join a group activity that will create a habit of structured exercise. Walk to the park, playing on the swings slides swimming and ball are good options too.  Complex activities that makes the child an expert to use hand and eye coordination are best for this age.

Active Play and Exercise for 13-18 year old

Daily physical activity is very important at this age. Physical activities are now advanced at this age. Teen boys/girls are more interested in social activities and many children drop exercise as a daily activity at this age. The suggested age for quitting is 13 for the girls and 15 for boys. This is where parental guidance is needed. As a parent you have worked hard to go step by step with your child and keep up the activity level according to the American health system. Following dietary guide lines and creating good eating habits with exercise have been your goal for the development of your child and therefore you have to keep up with it. Find whatever positive makes them focus on physical activity as a daily ritual. Team sports are a great option. Provide all the motivation with positive attitude so they keep up this activity. Provide them choices and help them maintain this activity. Motivate your teen with the benefits of fitness.  A role model, may be a teacher at the school or a family friend besides you is good to be around.  Do whatever is best to continue working on optimal health.  Just follow this formula.

 Nutritional Content of the food + Daily Exercise = Optimal Health 

 In the next post I will discuss the different types of exercise important for your better physical development.

Pictures courtesy of Digital Photos

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