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Health & Fitness

I'm Competing with Disney, Xbox, and PlayStation

How to Un-plug Your Kids and Create Healthy Habits

As a kids martial arts and fitness facility owner, I’m competing with Disney, Xbox, and PlayStation and – as a parent – so are you.

That’s not to say that you don’t control the times and programs your kids watch and play; we all have the option to put parameters on a potential bad habit. The issue I am getting at is that kids today are looking for instant gratification of “fun” games and “entertaining” shows. So, when I ask for five seconds of quality face-to-face interaction with my children for silly things like, oh, I don’t know, a recap of how school was today, what could possibly be fun about that?

Admittedly, I have used the television and game consoles as a means to get 30 minutes of work done or even just enough time to get a breather. I’m guessing you have too. While I was taking care of my third son, working part-time, and running chores and errands, I felt my life was running in 15-minute SpongeBob intervals, between commercials. I did some reading to my boy but when I ran out of fun voices, he needed to get his SpongeBob on.

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Now, as I run my own gym, I find myself bringing back the funny voices – as that change in inflection is a quick attention getter – in order to keep my students engaged. In fact, since I learned the term during a children’s martial arts certification program, “Edutainment” resonates with me every day. My competition isn’t other martial arts schools; we are all different in our own ways and offer various benefits. My competitors are the bells, whistles, and animation coming out of a box while the child sits comfortably on the couch. Yes, my mats are rectangular in shape but they’re simply white and clean on which the kid actually has to be physically active. I need to win over these young’uns in the first few minutes and then work harder at keeping them involved. Sure, some have the drive and quickly buy into the activity but there are those who need a little more effort to keep focused. I win when I convince the kids that fitness is as fun as they appear on TV and the challenges and successes of learning martial arts are more rewarding than video games. That’s when we all win. I have a chance once these boys and girls walk in the door. As a parent, how can you keep them engaged at home?

Here are some things that work for me:

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  • Taking everything away isn’t the answer; it’s just not realistic. Using items like TVs, iPads, and video games as rewards for good behavior are easier than setting time limits and trying to keep track, which may come off as punishments. Also, if you can’t beat them, join them: I play video games with my kids then we go to the gym and workout together.
  • If my competition is a character with yellow, square pants or something like that, I really need to make sure my kids feel that I am fun. This is a good time to leave all the work stuff at work and give real time and energy without picking up the phone. I find it best to leave mine in a completely different room. Simply put, I need to give my kids attention if I expect theirs.
  • Get them involved in sports, music, or any other hobby that doesn’t require batteries. I remember my eldest bringing home the newest version of “Dungeons & Dragons” called “Magic.”  I remembered chuckling about it but, honestly, he taught my youngest how to play. His younger brother learned how to add from using dice and they both strategized and used their imagination.

 

As I said before, it’s not easy to compete with the entertainment children have, literally, at their fingertips today. If we don’t try to make those changes now, it’s going to be that much harder to un-plug them tomorrow.

-Coach Tony Gutierrez, Certified Children’s Martial Arts Instructor

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