Hi I’m Rebound with a few tips about LIMITS

1. When you introduce the idea of fitness to your children, do so in a TOTALLY positive surrounding. LIMIT all outside distractions for this brief period and ATTUNE to your child’s needs.  This is NOT the time for multitasking. Remove your personal expectations about what kind of fitness is supposed to happen.  Remember, this isn’t as much about fitness as it is about establishing a long term Positive Fitness Attitude.  The intent is to create a positive emotional state for fitness, not one with tension, rigid structure, and adult agendas.

2.  The time periods that you devote to family fitness are special.  They provide opportunities for bonding, joy, pleasure, play, and spontaneity.  This is a time to LIMIT all interference. Based on your child’s age and stage of development, the environment that you set up should be safe, warm, fun, playful and exciting.   We’ll call this E TIME because it‘s a special enriching period devoted to setting in motion a Positive Fitness Attitude.  There will be plenty of time down the road to introduce more structure and discipline into the fitness process once the early positive experiences associated with fitness are established.

For example, if I’m upset about something that has just happened with one of my kids, different parts of my brain get activated, and depending on which part dominates at the time, my behavior will vary dramatically.  If the emotional part of my brain is dominating, I may be out of control, and even start yelling or screaming.  On the other hand, if the thinking part of the brain is dominant, I may look for a calm, cool and collected solution.

Learning to make the kinds of decisions that LIMIT irrational and self destructive thinking takes time and training just like any other area of success. Developing a Positive Fitness Attitude includes training the brain to think positive and to LIMIT negative, impulsive, irrational, self sabotaging emotions.  Fitness for the long haul, includes the understanding and use of healthy brain and mind strategies to counter the distractions and external influences that run counter to our health and wellness.

Hi, I’m Rebound. Take a look at a few LIMIT strategies in my tool box.

To develop a lifelong Positive Fitness Attitude, kids at an early age need to ENGAGE in fitness activities with their family members that are:

-Safe

-Developmentally age and stage appropriate

-Tailored to individual differences

-Playful, spontaneous and fun

-A positive emotional experience

-Free from parental “shoulds” about levels of learning and mastery

-Entry level positive experiences

Your family’s ENGAGEMENT in fitness is something to be considered carefully. The kind of ENGAGEMENT that takes place in fitness at the earlier ages can determine the future motivation for a Positive Fitness Attitude. Young children especially, have a natural drive toward movement, physical activity and play as they learn by exploring their world. The way that you ENGAGE your children in family fitness plays a HUGE role in how they are motivated in the future.

Hi, I’m Rebound.  Please visit my toolbox for a few tips about how to ENGAGE your children in the fitness process.

 1. Put on some age appropriate music and spend three to five minutes in a simple fitness activity directly in front of your very young child. Make this experience light, fun, enjoyable, loving and “interactive”. Think of this as more of an ATTUNEMENT activity than as a separate fitness activity.  This might include some light stretching, dancing, or a more structured Family Fitness Path activity. This is NOT about getting fit.  It’s about mirroring fitness.

2. Be aware of how your infant is responding to your movement and the music you have chosen.  If your child is “irritated” by your choice of music and movement, experiment with other elements that are  ATTUNED to your child’s needs until you find the right combination.

3. Stay “tuned in” with your child by maintaining eye contact. This is an activity for “connecting” and modeling more than one for getting fit.

REMEMBER: You are  setting the stage for a Positive Fitness Attitude through the interaction of these three M.A.R.V.E.L. elements:

1. MODELING movement
2. ATTUNEMENT with your child3.
3. Establishing a positive fitness VALUE through imitation learning

Take a minute to ask yourself this question, if I never “taught” my child values in the traditional way, through verbal lessons, what would he/she have learned simply by watching me?  Then ask yourself what “fitness” values are being taught to your child through your actions as a parent?  Remember the “monkey see-money do” process of imitation learning is where the power lies.  Children will begin to learn important values in infancy, simply by observing the models around them.  This is a fantastic opportunity to instill a Positive Fitness Attitude at the earliest possible age, instead of feeling that you have to wait until your child has the “comprehension” skills and verbal development to interact with you in some type of “rational” manner.

Hi, I’m Rebound: If you realize that the “monkey see-monkey do” principle of mirror neurons is extremely powerful from infancy on, you have the potential to develop the value foundation for a Positive Fitness Attitude in infancy. Take a minute to check out my tool box for a couple of early VALUE activities for your very young child.

Hi, I’m REBOUND.  Here’s a couple of simple activities that you can try to sharpen your REFLECTIVE skills.

1. For five days in a row, sit quietly for just three minutes.  Ask yourself the following question, how do I feel about exercising today?  REFLECT upon the first thing that you think of.  Write it down.
2. At the end of the week, look for a “pattern” in the five things that you wrote down about exercising.  Was there anything that showed up more than one time in your answers?
3. REFLECT ON THIS QUESTION: What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of a “fit” person?

A Positive Fitness Attitude depends upon reflection.  Here’s what I mean.  How many times have you had a negative fitness experience and got caught in a destructive sequence of thoughts that served no purpose whatsoever to move you forward in a positive direction? How many times have you just “stewed” in the negative “soup” unable to redirect your thinking toward learning something new, an alternative solution?  Millions of people fail at fitness because they don’t apply the reflective process to control their weight or fitness regimen? To create a consistent program of lifelong fitness, reflection is a necessity.

We’ll have a lot to say in this blog about REFLECTION as it applies to the FIRST STEPS TO FAMILY FITNESS program.  Stay tuned for much more.

Hi, I’m REBOUND, check out my toolbox for some simple REFLECTIVE activities.

1.   How important is ATTUNEMENT in your relationship with your child?

2.  Do you “get” the communication pattern of your child?

3.  How do you respond when you are frustrated or confused about your child’s communication pattern?.

In her book, Mindful Motherhood: Practical Tools for Staying Sane During Pregnancy and Your Child’s First Year (co-published with the Institute of Noetic Sciences) (Ions/Nhp), Cassandra Vietten likens this process of attunement to a tuning fork, so when a baby hits a particular tone, the mother resonates with that tone and reflects it back to her baby with body gestures, touch, facial expressions, tone of voice, and a general sense of positive and supportive understanding. Vietten says that this type of communication says to the child “Yes, I see and hear you, and I get what you’re feeling.”

Attunement is the second major component of the M.A.R.V.E.L. Method.  As you will see in future posts and in Rebound’s Toolbox activities, attunement has a major role to play in creating the foundation for a child’s sense of self and in their capacity for self management as they grow and develop.  Both of these factors are important for establishing a Positive Fitness Attitude.

Hi, I’m Rebound.  Check out my toolbox for a couple of beginning activities to sharpen your ATTUNEMENT skills.