by lisaschafferphoto

Adult habits are molded by their parents at a young age.  Eating habits, exercise habits, speech habits, etc. are formed young by parents.  There are a few habits that I find important for my son to have and I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity while he is young.  Unfortunately, those habits don’t always come easy for me.  It is going to take some work on my part to instill those habits on my son.  Fortunately, my wife is pretty good about those same things so at least I have a partner in crime to mold my boy the way he needs to be.

Exercise is huge for a child to enjoy at a young age.  Right now, I believe we are on the right track.  Here are some examples of what we are doing and how it effects him.

Little Gym

We started our son in Little Gym around his first birthday.  One of the things our instructors said about kids who go from crawling to walking is that their upper body strength increases at a much slower rate than their lower body.  Many of the activities they do at Little Gym are geared to increase that upper body strength, as well as increase confidence and a host of other benefits.  Every session, they do a warm up that includes running, jumping, skipping, galloping, rolling among other things.  Then, the kids can play on the gymnastic apparatuses.  On our son’s first day, he hung on the uneven bar for 10 seconds.  Unfortunately, it took him the rest of the year to do it again!!!  But that was OK because he was building a lot of other skills and we didn’t want to force him to do it until he was comfortable with it.  We are going to keep our son in the Little Gym until he is ready for some team sports.

Rock ‘n Roll Marathon

Phoenix hosted the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon last weekend.  My wife has completed that race and this year her sister ran it.  Brady has been exposed to running for fitness since birth.  His mom took him running as soon as he could fit into the running stroller.  He enjoys the experience and that is huge.  We didn’t know how much he took running in until this year at the race.  We went to support his aunt and he just wanted to run with the other runners.  He ran around (in his Cardinals jersey) waving to the runners, giving them hi-fives, and making them laugh.  At mile 18, you need a pretty good laugh.  When his aunt ran by, he jumped in and ran a little bit with her.  The whole experience was very positive for him and I believe is a building block for a lifetime of great fitness habits.

Riding His Bike

My son has a little Radio Flyer Deluxe Steer & Stroll Trike.  When he got it, he didn’t know how to pedal.  We had to push him around with the little steering wheel that is up at my height.  We thought this would take him out of the stroller when we took the dog for a walk, but he learned to pedal so fast that he would run over the dog and get mad at us for holding the steering wheel.  We actually had to go back to the stroller because our dog was getting mad at us.  She needs her exercise too!!  Now he goes down the sloping driveway and into the street and pedals around the neighborhood.  He pretends he is the UPS man and delivers packages to our neighbors.  He even parks his bike in the street like the UPS truck.  His next bike is a Skuut Balance Bike.  I got this for him for Christmas and he is still a bit too short for it, but the idea is that there are no pedals.  He scoots his feet on the ground to make it go so it teaches him balance to move up to a full bide with pedals.  Many people who have these said their kids didn’t even need training wheels when they moved up to a pedal bike. 

The whole idea behind all of this is to give him lifetime fitness habits.  Fit people are healthy, happy, productive people, and if he can be that then we have done a good job as parents.  And burning off a little energy is always a good thing for our little tornado!!