Physical Benefits
The physical benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle is probably the most commonly recognized due to the visual benefit behind this result. When we can visually understand something, our mind can digest and understand that information a lot clearer than things that can’t be seen such as psychological benefits.
In saying this, there are definitely two parts to the physical advantages that come from a well-balanced healthy and active lifestyle. These include our child’s outer physical appearance, and also their inner physical wellbeing.
For overweight children, weight loss is something that can take time and like most people that engage in physical activity to lose weight if we don’t see results right away we tend to give up. It is important to encourage our children and find ways for them to see the progress for themselves, such as documenting measurements, taking photos and rewarding them with new clothes that fit their slimmer body shape.
It is with this encouragement, and the recognition that the transformation is occurring that can help develop the psychological benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle.
Psychological Benefits
Psychology can play an important role in the success of creating a healthy and active lifestyle routine for our children, and this applies to both parent and child. By creating a positive mindset for ourselves, our children then learn to develop such a routine with their own way of thinking.
Not only does keeping a positive outlook on the change in lifestyle help with success of weight loss and fitness gains, children can also develop a more positive outlook on their everyday activities.
Children who exercise or engage in physical activities have lower levels of stress and depression, and this can generate a positive vibe towards things they may usually not enjoy. It is also known that an active child has enhanced cognitive skills. This meaning they have a greater ability to require knowledge, as their ability to reason and perceive is enhanced.
Psychological benefits such as enhanced cognitive skills is caused due to the release of Endorphins during physical activity. Endorphins are a natural chemical produced within our body that creates a feeling of euphoria within our mind.
Social Benefits
Besides the two more obvious benefits of a well-rounded physical and nutritional routine we also have the ability to improve in areas such as social interaction and communication. For a child, this is an important developmental stage that can be highly beneficial for future development and opportunities.
Engaging in physical activities in a social environment, for instance team sports, gymnastics, dancing and so on, can promote the key skills we require in social environments. These social skills can include leadership, teamwork, reasoning, patience and persistence among others.
Not only do we notice that children thrive on this type of learning, we also see another benefit from this resulting in the forming of relationships and close bonds with other children.
Friendships are an important factor of a child’s early years, and can be a precedent for many benefits in their later developmental years like adolescence. The ability to understand interaction in a social environment gives our children a chance to explore not only their own personality, but also the personalities and character traits of others.
Similar to the benefits we see in relation to children forming relationships with other children through social interaction during these activities, it is also apparent that this type of activity can strengthen the relationship between parent and child.
Children strive to impress us, showcasing their many talents which they learn and develop on a continual basis throughout their early years right through to their later years as a teenager. Encouragement in such physical activities once again promotes the psychological benefits but also creates a foundation of acceptance and self-adulation.
Learning Benefits
As we had discussed earlier, a healthy and active lifestyle can promote the enhancement of cognitive skills, allowing children an increased ability to acquire knowledge among other things. This can be beneficial not only for development in a physical and psychological sense, but this also helps with early learning environments.
The positive effects from this mean that children tend to pay more attention whilst in a learning environment such as kinder and school, allowing them to engage and interact in the subject they are discussing. The increased focus allows a child to more easily understand the coursework presented to them during class time resulting in a greater level of knowledge.
Not only does a physical lifestyle provide a greater ability for learning it is also apparent that children can develop an increased level of discipline. Aided by the increased levels of focus and understanding, a child’s level of comprehension is dramatically boosted allowing them to perceive concepts they might usually not understand or notice.
For a teacher, and even a parent, this increased development of self-discipline can dramatically improve learning environments and daily tasks that might usually be a daunting process.
In terms of self-development, one of the most important learning challenges is that of key motor skills. Key motor skills are the ability to interact with objects such as kicking and throwing, hand eye co-ordination, the ability to balance by hopping and skipping, and also increased and decreased speed of movements.
For a child to explore their world, these are important areas of development that they can learn through trial and error. The introduction of physical activities at a young age can aid the development of these key motor skills by providing exciting and new challenges for the child to succeed at.
What I hope you’re starting to notice is that a healthy and active lifestyle for our children can provide many key advantages leading to an increase in early development, in many cases allowing children to reach important areas of development much sooner. Not only are we providing our children the best start to life with healthy bodies, we are also providing a healthy mindset and the knowledge to succeed at anything in life they wish to achieve.
For more benefits of an active and healthy lifestyle you can check out FitKids Online. FitKids Online is a site that I have developed to raise awareness of these issues and to educate parents on active children’s lifestyles. Being a parent, as well as a personal trainer, the issue of child obesity is something that is quite close to my heart. If through FitKids Online I can help even one child lead a more healthy and active lifestyle, than I can say it has been successful.
Also available is the FitKids Online’s eGuide “A Jumping Start to Life” where we will take a closer look as to why Child Obesity is becoming an epidemic and how it seems to be an issue that is spiralling out of control at a rapid pace.
I do hope this has been beneficial to you in one way or another, and has possibly opened your eyes to an issue that for many years has gone unnoticed. If you do take a moment to look at fitkidsonline.co, I hope you find some valuable information, and I look forward to hearing any responses, questions and queries.
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