Exercise for Kids: Health Benefits, Importance & Parents Role?

source: hearstapps

Every parent wants their children to be cheerful and healthy in their life. The most effective and easiest way to achieve this requires your kids to carry out some physical activities. Many researches have established that exercising regularly is the key to curbing several life-threatening diseases, such as heart problems, cancer, and diabetes.

Furthermore, conducting physical activities regularly enhances self-esteem and mood, thereby lessening sleeplessness and depression. There are plenty of children's exercises which can support your kids to stay fit from an early age.

source: guardian

Nowadays, children and teens get stressed when they are preparing for any event, competition, class test, final examination, etc. The day-to-day increasing pressure of modern education can also lead to several mental and physical health issues. Therefore, you must encourage your kids to exercise and gain various health benefits, such as:

• Strengthening Heart

Heart is the central organ responsible for blood pumping throughout the human body. It is the crucial organ which gets stronger while performing physical activities. Working out daily helps lessen the risk factors of various issues that may lead to cardiovascular diseases like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart valve complications etc. By strengthening heart muscles with exercises, your child can keep heart diseases at bay for a long time.

• Regulating Blood Pressure

Performing physical activities regularly helps minimise the accumulation of unwanted fats and harmful cholesterol in the blood vessels. This keeps the walls of blood vessels flexible and helps manage blood pressure while improving circulation. Thus, the chances of heart attacks, blockages, strokes, etc., will be reduced.   

• Making Lungs More Efficient

Exercising habitually improves the potency and capacity of your kid's lungs alongside its efficacy in moving air in and out of the body. More oxygen will be pulled inside your body, and carbon dioxide will be discharged more efficiently. Moreover, daily workouts from early childhood reduce the likelihood of a reduction in lung capacity caused by age or inactivity later in life. 

• Decreasing Blood Sugar Levels

Regular exercise helps prevent excess sugar from accumulating within your blood by enabling muscles to consume more glucose from the bloodstream and utilise it for energy. This helps manage blood glucose levels and reduce the risk of diabetes. Besides exercise, kids should also avoid sugary foods and drinks like chocolates, chips, soda or sports drinks as much as possible since an unhealthy diet is a major cause of diabetes. 

• Managing Weight

Obesity at an early age is one of the leading health problems in children globally. When an individual is inactive, they are likely consuming more calories than usual. These excess calories get collected in the form of fats and increase the body weight of the concerned person. 

Thus, exercising regularly and maintaining a healthy diet may help your kid avoid becoming overweight or obese. Reduced weight is beneficial for heart health and helps manage diabetes.

• Strengthening Bones

With the growth of muscles, bones also get stronger. Exercising on a regular basis strengthens bones so that your kids stay strong. Furthermore, better muscle strength alongside high flexibility boosts your child’s overall fitness and health. Besides, strong bones enable better posture to enhance the appearance and make your kid stay more lively and youthful.

• Improving Mental Health

Research has shown that regular exercise helps in reducing the level of stress, anxiety, and depression. It can also increase the quality of sleep, which is essential for a kid's overall health and well-being. Having workouts also helps reduce stress in your child and improve mental health while regulating blood pressure and lessening the risk of heart disease.  

So these are some major advantages that your kid can attain by participating in different children's exercises. If you wish to see your kid lead a healthy life, free from any disease, encourage them to carry out some popular workouts.

Considering the importance of exercise for kids, being a parent, you should encourage your children to carry out various types of exercise by engaging them in different child-friendly games. 

Also, working out on a regular basis will enable your children to stay physically and psychologically fit. Being parents, you can push your children to do some exercises that will keep them healthy. Following are some major roles of parents:

• Give safe spaces to a child so that they can enjoy their childhood actively.
• Help them find fun and involve in various enjoyable family activities
• Develop genuine judgement regarding normal commotion
• Provide several opportunities for them to take part in sports such as cricket, football, volleyball, etc.
• Parents keep their children away from television, computer games, and the internet as much as possible so that they do not get addicted.
• Encourages them in reading, writing, painting or other creative activities

So, from the above discussions, you have understood the importance and necessity of children’s exercise. Also, having a crystal-clear idea about parents' responsibilities towards kids' exercise will make you boost your children’s confidence and also help them lead a hale and hearty life. There is no telling when a severe ailment will strike, so it is better to take precautionary measures beforehand.