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* Find a My Gym for kids near your home now!
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Getting kids to exercise regularly is easy if they enjoy group activities such as organized sports or simply running around playing with other children, but what do you do if you have a child who is reluctant to join in such activities?
For children who are bullied or who fail to fit in socially, activities like these can be very distressing. Pressure from parents to get involved will only increase reluctance.
It's no use asking the child to change their attitude, because often it isn't that child's attitude which is at the heart of the problem - it's the attitudes of others.
Lack of confidence is one of the principle traits which bullies seek out in potential victims, so children who lose their confidence because of bullying can become trapped in a vicious circle which itself damages their health. This is a particular problem for overweight or otherwise physically unfit kids.
The best thing you can do to help children in this situation is to enable them to feel more confident about their own skills and abilities, and especially about their bodies. Children's exercise can help them to build the physical self assurance they need to turn their lives around.
It's a distressing thing to always be the last to be chosen when teams are picked for school sports. Children who've experienced this sort of thing need to learn to exercise with other people, and they need to know that they'll be respected when they do so.
This means that you need to spend time exercising with your child and helping them to improve their abilities. Concentrate on activities for which the child shows some natural talent. As these start to improve, look for opportunities for the child to exercise with others who know nothing of their history, for instance by traveling to a sports facility on the other side of town.
This will take away the usual pressure and give the child the opportunity to enjoy being physical. Children's confidence will grow as they discover how much fun this is, and in time that confidence will extend across the rest of their lives.
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