Now it’s time to think about upping the amount of activity your family gets each day. Since when do tykes who are barely out of diapers (or perhaps still in them!) need to “work out”? “As soon as they can crawl!” says Avery Faigenbaum, Ed.D., a professor of health and exercise science who specializes in pediatrics at The College of New Jersey, in Ewing. But of course we aren’t talking about the same sort of fitness routine you put yourself through (or think about, anyway). Exercise tot-style is really all about the physical play that young kids engage in pretty much whenever they have a chance. “Children this age are innately active,” says Faigenbaum, “but in a very different way than adults are. You’ll never see a child jog for thirty minutes without stopping. He’ll run around for five or ten seconds, stop, then run again.”
And that’s just as it should be. The workout objectives of toddlers and preschoolers are different from the fitness goals of grown-ups; little kids don’t need to get their heart rates into a certain range, for example. Sure, activity is important for building stamina, strengthening bones and muscles, and honing balance and coordination. But at this age, it’s most vital for developing fundamental movement skills — running, jumping, throwing, catching, kicking, climbing, and the like — and establishing healthy habits. “Negative and positive behaviors are ingrained in early childhood,” notes Faigenbaum. And that applies to exercise. Your kid is a natural fitness buff (does she ever really sit still?!). The trick is to keep her that way. “A body in motion tends to stay in motion,” says personal trainer and Parenting Mom Squad member Larysa DiDio of Pleasantville, NY, the coauthor of Sneaky Fitness: Fun, Foolproof Ways to Slip Fitness Into Your Child’s Everyday Life…
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