If you are a parent it’s no secret sometimes children can be a little hyper. We all become restless and it’s perfectly acceptable to take some time and get your ‘wiggles’ out if necessary.

This becomes a major issue during long school breaks. Spring break, summer and Christmas break can all mean most children are sitting around falling out of their daily routine. Keeping your child motivated and activate year round is proven to have long-term benefits towards developing a healthy lifestyle.

Keeping your children active during school breaks

It can be easy for kids (and parents) to just want to relax and become couch potatoes when school is out. However, it’s important that as parents, we keep our kids motivated year round, in a fun and relaxed way of course. By limiting the amount of inactivity our kids have, we can find ways to create and promote a healthy active lifestyle for our kids.

For my family, we practice a variety of methods. Yoga, youth sports, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America are just a few places we frequent for family activities.

Eating Healthy

I have the world’s pickiest eaters. I’m not sure why, but they just won’t eat anything I place in front of them. We try to limit sweets as much as possible and incorporate a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables into their diets. During school breaks, I don’t load the house up on packaged snacks. Instead, we take the weekends to make our own fresh food snacks that I know the kids would enjoy while on school break.

Youth Sports

Social recreation is essential to the healthy development of youth and children. Over the years my children have participated in a number of youth sports to learn how to socialize and learn teamwork.

• Adventure and Challenge
• Health and Well-being
• Strength and endurance
• Growth and Development
• Leadership and Teamwork
• Improved Self-Image
• Reduced problems

Which ultimately produces:

Stronger families and communities.

Some young people dream of wearing an NBA uniform someday or suiting up to play in the NFL on Sunday afternoons. These are lofty goals, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support their efforts. Instead, while working with an athlete with professional sports aspirations, have him set realistic goals and work on honing his skills. By improving his game, he’ll gain more satisfaction from the sport and be more inclined to stay involved with it. And who knows? He may just make it to the pros one day!

Yoga

So what are the benefits of kids yoga? Children derive enormous benefits from yoga. Physically, it enhances their flexibility, strength, coordination, and body awareness. In addition, their concentration and sense of calmness and relaxation improve.

Yoga helps create awareness in the body through deep breathing and movement. It gives kids a way to express themselves, build a strong connection between what they hear and what they do. Children that have healthy body awareness are more confident and strong, have better posture, breathe better and have a sense of quiet strength.

Additional Benefits of Kids Yoga

Children these days have packed schedules and sometimes move at a frantic pace. If your family is anything like me, we are usually at someone’s practice or game or dance class any given day of the week. With a number of activities children participate in, combining that with more screen time than any other generation, our kids are experiencing an unprecedented amount of stress. Yoga teaches kids from a young age methods of self-help such as proper breathing, meditation, and healthy movement. There are no winners or score-keeping, just a great opportunity for children to develop body awareness and self-confidence in a fun and open environment. Other benefits of kids yoga:

• Healthy activity for their spine, joints, and muscles
• Learn how to use their bodies in a healthy way
• Manage stress through breathing, awareness, meditation and healthy movement
• Build concentration and focus
• Increase their confidence and positive self-image
• Make new friends and be part of a warm, non-competitive group
• Healthy development of posture and balance

Stretching and lengthening are major benefits of yoga as well. Strong muscles without flexibility are useless, they also can’t move quickly and will pull on joints and bones risking injury.

What ways do you keep your kids active during school breaks?