The Fun of Family Fitness

My wife and I like to introduce our two daughters to as many activities as possible. Sure, running is one of them, and it’s kind of hard for them not to notice that it seems as though Daddy is always heading out the door for a run. But we never tell them how running is the greatest sport, or how they’re wasting their time when they’re skating, dancing, boating, playing basketball or tennis, or doing any of the other activities that they’ve found that they enjoy.
What we want to do is get across the idea that fitness is a lifestyle. We want to show them that being active and healthy and feeling good while using your body on a regular basis should be the norm. Children are much more likely to develop good fitness habits for the rest of their lives if they see that fitness is important to you. That’s a much better message to send than presenting fitness as an occasional intrusion that you have to tend to out of obligation. In terms of running, this approach means that if your child expresses an interest in it, explore that interest together. Go for a run with your kid. Take him or her to your races, not so much to run, but to show the festive atmosphere that races have. Do what you can to expose your child to those elements of running that are going to have the most appeal to kids.
You might not think so, but one of the biggest appeals of running is going to be the chance to spend some quality time with you. Young kids, especially, will do almost anything to get adult attention. So if they want to run with you, indulge them. Running together can strengthen your relationship, because the child will see your runs as one-on one, undivided attention time. Let these runs unfold on the child’s terms. That might mean jumping through puddles, or stopping to look at animals, or heading home after just a few minutes. Let them set the pace and the course. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun for them, which means feeling good right then.

Keep It Enjoyable!

Even if your kids want to run for all the right reasons, I don’t think that children under the age of 14 should look at their running as training. This advice doesn’t mean that children under this age can’t run as much as 20 miles a week. If they want to run that much, enjoy doing so, and don’t get hurt, I think that’s an acceptable upper limit of mileage for preteens. Three miles or 30 minutes are good measures of the farthest that young runners should go at a time.
But although kids may run as much as adults, running should remain a part of their play and one of many regular activities, not something that they plan and obsess about. Going for a run should be primarily about enjoying it on that day, not to build endurance so that they can try to run twice as far in a month. This book has emphasized that if you’re going to make progress in your running, then you need to be consistent with it. Kids who run should ignore all of that. If they hit a spell where they don’t feel like running for a month or two, don’t force them to. If you do, you’re sending the message that running is something that they have to do, not that they want to do.

Be a Running Role Model

You certainly shouldn’t force children into running. Little League syndrome is as bad in running as it is in baseball. Children can sense when you’re pushing them into an activity. They might not resist immediately, but eventually they will. Having fun consistently ranks as the top reason that kids give for participating in sports. For preteens, fun almost always means the here and now. Most preteens haven’t developed what psychologists call abstract thinking, the ability to set long-term goals and to see how doing something that might not feel good right now is worth it for the pay-off later. In a certain sense, isn’t that what a lot of running is about? A big motivation for getting out for a run today is because you know that doing so will benefit you later—you’ll feel better the next day, or you’ll be able to run faster in a race a month from now, or you’re working toward a weight-loss goal, or you’re making one of an ongoing series of contributions to fighting disease, and so on. When children don’t come to running on their own terms, they’re not going to like it because they don’t yet have that sense of delayed gratification.
If a kid wants to run and can state why and seems to enjoy it, then I’m all for some low-level regular running.
Children’s attitudes toward running largely stem from what they notice about how the adults around them approach it. If you’re always walking around the house before your runs moaning about what a horrible chore running is, then don’t be surprised if your kids don’t show much interest in it. But if your children see that running to you means getting outside and exploring and feeling good and being with your friends and having fun, they’ll probably think otherwise. Running will seem like a form of play.