Exercise & Child Development

Video Transcript

Hi! This is Patti Billings. I am a certified pediatric nurse practitioner on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip, we are going to talk a little bit about physical activities or exercises for children. Babies should be put on their tummy for a couple of times a day. Even though we recommend now that they sleep on their back, but they should be put on their tummy, so that they can develop upper body strength and learn to push their arms up and hold their head up and then sit and crawl and so forth. Just giving a baby the opportunity to do those things is important and not keeping them in an infant seat or walker for long periods of time and certainly not front of the television. Many children are placed in front of the television as a baby sitter and so they sit and watch T.V. sometimes for hours on hand. Although TV is not harmful necessarily, the number of hours that they spend watching TV can be. We know that children who watch a great amount of TV is a very passive experience. They sit there and are just a kind of entertained versus a child who is outside playing on the swings, walking a balance beam and going up and down the slide and climbing stairs. These are all things that help them develop their coordination and their physical strength. The toddlers need a variety of experience so swinging is good, walking a balance beam, learning to take turns like playing Simon Says and following and imitating are all really good experiences for children. I think most children don’t need to exercise as such. They need the ability to go outside and have some physical activity. As children get older, exercise becomes more important; you know getting them involved in some sports if they are interested, dancing classes, gymnastics, riding bikes and so forth are all good things for children. Children should at least spend more than an hour or two in front of a computer or television. For parents that work, it becomes an issue sometimes when they don’t have as much time or in the winter when there is as much daylight when they get home from work to do some of these activities with the children, and children are great imitators and will do exactly what their parents do and as they grow up, they will do the same and more and more. I think it’s important that family set aside sometime not necessarily daily, but daily would be nice to do some physical activity with their children, whether it’s playing follow the leader around the house, going out for a walk with the dog after supper, something that you can do together and spend sometime together. I think family activities are important. Families that like sports for instance, that families that ski or do cross county skiing or go ice skating if you can do that as a family, that tells the child that this is an important thing in their life; it helps to prevent obesity and some other problems.

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