Movements? Children know best.

Charles often demonstrates "Pilates moves" in his playtime. Inverted V, plank, leg pull etc. It's not easy to capture his movements on camera because those movements take place so naturally and quickly. Here are few rare shots that captured Charles in "Swan" and "Single leg kick" positions, look at that beautiful extension throughout the spine ^_^:

Healthy children are born with natural instinct to move their body efficiently, and in the way the body is really designed for. Remember the graceful somative movements seen in the video in my post "The Forgotten Fundamentals"? Moving efficiently can be viewed in terms of whole body coordination or in terms of specific skilled movements (Booth et al., 1997; Clough, McCormack, & Trail, 1993). It is very important for children to retain this ability to move efficiently for long term engagement and also enjoyment in physical activity throughout whole life span.


However, as the pressure to excel in school increases, children are spending more and more time sitting down reading and doing homework. Of course academic and cognitive development in children is very important for the competitive world today, but the implication of sitting for longer duration is that poor posture is often developed in these otherwise healthy children, causing them to lose the ability to move efficiently. This can possibly reduce their enjoyment in being active and in sports performance, and many children grow up as sedentary adults. The rest is then history and we know that inactivity among adults is now epidemic.

I will be sharing more of what I read and learn about movement development in children. Meanwhile, let your kids have as much opportunity to be active as possible. Tumbling on the grassfield, having ball of a time in all kinds of ball games, or even just hopping around the house... more importantly, parents are really children's best friends and teachers that we have to be involved. Jump and hop silly with them, run and laugh in the park... Through these activities, not only we can emotionally bond with our kids and improve our own health, we are actually helping them associate physical activities to the warm feeling of being loved and being happy...all so important to make being physically active an enjoyable experience for a life time.

There are many ways to add fun physical activities in our daily life. What do you do with your kids?