Fam­ily Fit­ness on the Sly

This week’s Sun­day USA Week­end news­pa­per insert con­tained a brief arti­cle enti­tled “How to sneak fit­ness into your children’s lives” (online ver­sion here), high­light­ing a book by Larysa Didio called Sneaky Fit­ness: Fun, Fool­proof Ways to Slip Fit­ness into Your Child’s Every­day Life.

For some rea­son, the arti­cle trou­bled me as I was read­ing it, and I couldn’t quite put my fin­ger on it. After all, any­thing espous­ing fit­ness for kids has to be good, right?

And then I fig­ured out what was bug­ging me so much.

Fam­ily fit­ness is not some­thing you should “sneak” in

Fam­ily fit­ness is not the same as hid­ing the dog’s med­i­cine in his dog­food. It’s not some­thing that’s sup­posed to be good for you, yet so unpalat­able that you need to sneak it in.

Some­how, deceiv­ing our chil­dren holds a strange attrac­tion on par­ents. From Santa, to the Easter Bunny, to the Tooth Fairy — trick­ing our kids has become part of our parental culture.

One day my kids used a kit to make lit­tle col­or­ful mar­tians out of gel. When they weren’t look­ing, the mar­tians dis­ap­peared because “their space­ship took off!” For the next half hour, I would make the mar­tians keep reap­pear­ing some­where else in the house when the kids were look­ing the other direc­tion so that they could be redis­cov­ered to squeals of delight moments later. The kids had fun with it. We had fun with it. But I don’t think our kids will grow up into adults who believe that lit­tle mar­tians really did fly around our house that day.

I also don’t think that par­ents expect their kids to grow up believ­ing in Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or Lep­rechauns, or all the other cute lit­tle pranks we play on our inno­cent chil­dren. So if we expect our kids to fig­ure out our sub­terfuge as they mature and grow out of it, then why would they not also “grow out of” our fit­ness subterfuge?

If the only way you can get your kids to stay fit is by sneak­ing exer­cise into their lives, what hap­pens when they grow up and move out? Par­ents should be prepar­ing their kids to live their lives on their own by help­ing them learn how to make good choices, not by push­ing our choices on them through stealth.

Fam­ily fit­ness should be some­thing fun! It should be some­thing you want to do with your kids, and also some­thing that your kids want to do with you. It’s not just about doing it because it’s good for you. It’s about enjoy­ing activ­i­ties together, and enjoy­ing a health­ier lifestyle together.

So how do you make fam­ily fit­ness enjoyable?

On this count, the arti­cle pretty much has it right — cre­ate fun chal­lenges; give them the tools (although I don’t par­tic­u­larly see how replac­ing dining-​​table chairs with fit­ness balls could pos­si­bly end well); and be fit together.

I think the more open you are with your kids about fit­ness, the more they see you liv­ing a healthy lifestyle, and the more you include them in your activ­i­ties, the more you will all enjoy fit­ness together.

Peo­ple are catch­ing on. Peo­ple want to have fun with their fam­i­lies and they want to have healthy fam­i­lies. Fam­i­lies want to do fun and active things together, and more and more resources are becom­ing avail­able to help fam­i­lies do just that. (In fact, there’s a great web­site in my blogroll focused entirely on how to make fit­ness fun with your family.)

Take a walk with your kids, play tag, go ori­en­teer­ing together, go on a bike ride, go swim­ming, set up an ad-​​hoc obsta­cle course in the back­yard. Do any­thing, just do it together. Your kids will keep beg­ging you for more, and you won’t have to sneak it in.

In all fair­ness, I haven’t actu­ally read the book in ques­tion (and, frankly, am not adding it to my book list after this arti­cle), but I ask any­one who has to please com­ment below with your views. And if you have some cre­ative ideas for includ­ing kids in fun and healthy activ­i­ties, please share them in the comments!

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