It seems I have touched a nerve by noticing the correlation between our play parks being empty and parents outsourcing their childcare to an iPad.
Some of the reactions have been wild.
Guilt is a funny thing, I guess.
Anyway.
I make a point of taking my two kids to the park on the days Jess is working, weather permitting.
Why?
Three reasons:
1) One of the downsides of being active is that your tolerance for slobbing on the sofa fades to nothing, so you’ll look for any opportunity to move about in the fresh air.
2) The park is very quiet (‘cuz all the kids are at home gawping at dancing vegetables) so it’s a great environment for pondering life and business.
3) My kids are learning that physical activity is a natural part of life, not just something you do for an hour at a sterile “club” a couple of times per week at best.
Although, I believe it’s important to introduce a little structured activity when the time is right.
Connie is four now, so I have decreed she is to start training (or “train-ding” as she calls it).
Nothing crazy, just some running, jumping, and rolling – all the stuff she is doing anyway, but to a structured framework.
Specifically, I’ve settled on a four-minute (one minute for each year of her age) game of “follow the leader”.
For example, the other day we did:
* Kangaroo hops for distance (about 10m),
* Run 20m,
* Rest periods were however long it took for Connie to re-focus,
* Repeat until four minutes elapsed.
Getting Connie to do this requires zero convincing, cajoling, or coercing on my part.
She actually loves it so much she badgers me to go to the park so she can do her train-ding.
It’s almost like she sees her mother and I taking our fitness seriously and wants nothing more than to do the same.
In any case, it’s a fine driver that keeps me hammering away at the basics in the gym week in, week out (planned rest weeks aside).
Two such basic, “old school” approaches are described in September’s issue of “The Phil Tyreman Letter” (one for beginners and one for those who are longer in the tooth).
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