With video game systems, social networking and the hundreds of channels that are available on television, it’s no wonder why your child has chosen a more sedentary lifestyle. When compared to being able to use the latest gizmo, outdoor activities are losing their appeal among children. This lack of activity causes kids to be more susceptible to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. And, as a parent, you can help ward off these conditions for your techno-curious child by introducing healthier ways of interacting with technology early in life.
Gear up your child’s fitness
Nowadays, there seems to be an app for everything, even for making the most texting-thumb-injury-prone child more aware of health. And, by combining physical fitness with your child’s appetite for technology early, you can help your child find healthier ways of interacting with those devices.
If your child is over the age of 4 and you own an iPad™, one fun and free physical activity that you and your child can do together to learn about nutrition is “Aaah! Condiments!”. If you’re looking to play to your child’s love of gadgets—just in a more active way—then this game could help catapult your child off the couch. “Aaah! Condiments!” uses the physical actions of the user such as jumping, shaking, pushing, pulling, and screaming to keep condiments away from the healthy food. The more you move around and yell, the less likely that condiments will get on your food. And, the more physical activity you can bring into the technology that your child uses, the easier it will be for that child to get a workout.
Children coming close to those terrible teen years may not want to play kiddie games. That’s when you can try Rhythmatics Kids. While it may be no surprise that your phone can double as a personal training tool, this app for your Android™-based smart phone turns personal training into a game for your older child. Walk, jog or run to the beat of the music while matching each step to the rhythm of the song. At the end, your child is given a score that’s based on how well the activity synched with the music, distance traveled and calories burned. The goal for the user is to continually better a score by matching pace with the music, while also improving fitness.
Step up the stats
As a parent, the most important thing may not be getting your child to eat healthy and be active, but remembering how much your child ate or what your child did. To give you one less thing to remember, the application “Kids Rise Up!” provides a point system that tracks your child’s eating habits and level of activity right on your mobile device. This mobile application can be set up to track everything from how much time your child spends playing outside to how many servings of vegetables eaten.
Setting up the application is easy. First, register an account on the mobile-friendly site and input your child’s age, sex and first name. After that, you can create activities and assign points based on the type of activity, the time spent on that activity, eating habits and whether chores were completed—providing you with daily results and success rates for your child.
However you decide to make technology a part of raising your child, keep in mind that as technology becomes a part of everything we do, your child will have to continually adapt as they reach maturity. This may be a far cry from how you spent your childhood, but by incorporating these tools now, you’ll create a hunger for fitness that will feed in to your child’s appetite for technology.
iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc.
Android is a trademark of Google Inc.
References:
Apps for healthy kids. (n.d.). Apps for Healthy Kids.
Children's need for physical activity: Fact sheet. (n.d.). American Heart Association.
Interbots. (n.d.). Aaah! Condiments! for iPad on the iTunes App Store. Apple - iTunes .
Kids rise up!. (n.d.). Kids Rise Up!.
Rhythmatics kids. (n.d.). Rhythmatics.
