Category: Well-Being

The recent pandemic may have resulted in your kids spending too much time staring at a screen. While it’s understandable to meet their homeschool responsibilities, modern lifestyles often leave your little ones online long after they “punch out” for the day.

The overuse affects their health. For one, kids who spend too much time indoors staring at screens are more likely to need glasses. Furthermore, entire books have been written on the impact of social media and online interactions on mental health in youth.

What can you do? How about reconnecting with those you love the most while doing something more fun than scrolling through Twitter? Here are nine screen-free family activities to participate in this week.

1. Host a Family Game Night

What’s an inexpensive way to get your kiddos off the screen? Bring back family game night. This activity offers the perfect bonding opportunity while possibly making your little one perform better in school.

How? Some benefits of playing games with loved ones include improved motor functioning and problem-solving abilities, helping them perform better at everything from science experiments to essay writing. You can even throw a bit of math and economic theory in there if you can resist flipping the Monopoly board.

2. Recreate the Drive-in Experience

When was the last time you visited your public library? If it’s been a while, you should explore. They have much more than books available for rent, including movie projectors — letting you recreate the drive-in experience at home on the cheap.

Light the patio heaters if it’s a bit chilly and create a space where you have an unobstructed view of your projection “screen.” Bring plenty of pillows, blankets and a big bowl of popcorn to share as you kick back and enjoy a flick with the fam. Better yet, invite a few friends and nurture your IRL social network.

3. Have the Great Kids Bake-Off

Have you seen all the cute kid’s cooking shows on channels like Food Network? You can recreate them at home.

Doing so teaches more than home economics. It also reinforces their math skills, especially if you have to double or reduce the recipe to fit your unique needs.

4. Try Out Escape Games

Escape games can provide a thrilling and challenging experience for families looking to engage their minds while having fun together.

Whether you choose to visit a local escape room or create your own at home, this activity encourages teamwork and problem-solving skills. Many companies also offer Private Escape Rooms that can accommodate your whole family, ensuring a unique experience tailored just for you. Not only is this a great way to bond, but it can also be an opportunity for your family to practice communication and collaboration.

5. Play With Pets in Need

Does your lease say “no dogs allowed,” causing you to deny your child’s desperate pleading for a pet? Why not do some good while letting them enjoy their 4-legged friends?

How? Scores of shelters need volunteers to walk dogs and socialize kitties. You’ll have to fill out an application and complete basic training — growing your kids’ skills. Performing acts of kindness is one of the best things you can do for your mental health, as it prompts the release of positive neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.

6. Go on a Nature Walk

A nature walk is another way to nurture your physical and mental health. Doing so eases anxiety and depression symptoms while lowering blood pressure and helping you manage your weight.

You can make this activity educational if you like. There are scores of plant, animal and insect identification apps to let you discover science out on the trail, and most cost less than $35 a year. Alternatively, you could practice mindfulness, focusing on how you feel and your sensory experience as you stroll.

7. Take Advantage of an Inexpensive Day at the Museum

The museum is a fabulous place to study anything from art to anthropology. It can also be a budget-friendly screen-free activity. How? Many museums offer special family days where kids can get in for free.

Better yet, many such areas feature beautifully sculptured grounds where you can enjoy a picnic lunch. You might brown-bag it but enjoy scenery worthy of the Four Seasons.

8. Family Bonding Through Creative Play

Take your playtime to the next level. Go beyond board games with educational toys that engage fingers and minds alike. Games and toys that require piecing together multi-dimensional structures or puzzles are fun for all ages, including parents.

There is nothing stopping you from working on two projects at the same. Set up two builder-type toys at each end of the table, perhaps one for younger kids and the other for teens. Family members can move back and forth assisting each other to complete each project.

9. Create a Unique Work of Art

Do you want a teddy bear your child will cherish well into adulthood? You can still find Build-a-Bear workshops, sometimes conveniently located in big box stores you frequent anyway, like Walmart.

Alternatively, get creative with clay. Businesses such as As You Wish let you craft custom pottery on their spinning wheels and fire it for you to make a one-of-a-kind keepsake.

10. Build a Better Playset

Do your kids constantly clamor to go to the park? The playground is a fabulous resource, but sometimes, sketchy neighborhoods or even over-concerned parents of other children make it questionable for your kids to play solo.

Instead, consider working on a custom playset in your backyard this weekend. Let your kids help to hone their motor skills and offer engineering advice — how many swings do they want? What could the danger be of placing them too close together? Let them work their wee problem-solving skills. This project may take more than one day to complete, but that’s all the more time to enjoy this screen-free activity with your little ones.

11. Start a Victory Garden

Planting a garden has oodles of benefits. It provides your family with fresh, organic produce and gets you moving in the great outdoors. Best of all, it can lower your grocery bill, and who doesn’t need to save more on shopping these days?

You can make this activity even cheaper if you save the seeds from the produce you already buy. Cucumbers, green beans, tomatoes and peppers are a snap to dry and keep and sprout to new life in the spring.

Screen-Free Family Activities

Are you seeking a screen-free weekend with your kiddos? The above activities provide fun, bonding opportunities and even the chance to sneak in a bit of extra education.

Enjoy these screen-free family activities this week or anytime. You’ll feel closer to your kids and protect their health from too much screen time.

About the Author
Ava Roman (she/her) is the Managing Editor of Revivalist, a women’s lifestyle magazine that empowers women to live their most authentic life. When Ava is not writing you’ll find her in a yoga class, advocating for her children or whipping up something delicious in the kitchen!

When you go out to the mall or a restaurant, you’re likely to see kids of all ages texting or playing games on devices. While many parents find devices effective in keeping their kids under control in public, there are downsides to the constant technology. Here are ways to encourage kids to leave their devices at home.

Effects of Smartphones and Tablets

The average teen spends nearly nine hours a day on electronic devices and many kids find they have an addictive relationship with mobile devices. The addictive tendencies can lead to mental and physical health issues, such as:

• Behavioral problems
• Depression and anxiety
• Sleep disruptions
• Attention and hearing issues
• Obesity

It’s already hard enough to keep your kids offline and taking away the screen can result in bigger issues like temper tantrums or any listed side effects. You are your child’s first teacher, so setting the standard with the electronics from the start is essential to their continued development.

Ways to Encourage Kids to Ditch Devices

If your kids are hooked on their devices, you may find yourself constantly struggling to get their attention. You might be tempted to give up, but you don’t want your child to miss out on quality conversations or meaningful family time. Encourage your child to live in the moment and embrace the important things in life.

Here are some ways to get your children to put down their devices.

1. Maintain a Device Schedule

Setting boundaries for the time spent on devices will limit usage and make monitoring easier.  When you make a schedule, it provides a routine and doesn’t give kids the opportunity to get excited about screen-free activities. Get your child to understand they can only be on them for a certain amount of time and are completely off limits during other times.

Make specific times of the day that are non-negotiable times without devices. No phones before bed or mealtime is a great way to set a boundary to limit screen time but ensure their health is kept in mind. Blue light from a smartphone causes issues in producing melatonin, which regulates your sleep cycle, making it more difficult to sleep.

2. Don’t Use Devices as Rewards

You may leverage device time to encourage your kids to study and do homework — this could end up causing more harm than good. Using them as rewards and distractions may have opposite effects on children.

3. Plan Bonding Activities

Plan some things for you and your child to do that require leaving the phone out of reach. You both have busy day-to-day lives and quality time together might be limited. Try playing games or engaging in activities together, like cooking or gardening.

This is a great time to uncover new hobbies like reading, playing instruments or sports. Find something you enjoy doing together to unplug and engage in hands-on activities.

4. Set Passwords

In reality, you won’t be able to monitor screen time as much as you wish you could. In these cases, technology is not the bad guy. You can set passwords on devices to keep them off when they shouldn’t be on them.

5. Have No-Device Days

When you want a day for the whole family to engage in activities, organize a day for everyone to put them away. You can also educate your child on what it means to take a mental health day to disconnect and recharge.  They will mirror what you do, so it won’t seem as bad when devices are off-limits to everyone.

You can play games together or get out of the house for the evening. Taking them away for the entire day might be challenging, so you can gradually implement them, starting with a particular time of day with no devices and working up to the whole day.

6. Have Break Times

With your child buries their head in their device, they will be a lot of built-up energy, so encourage break times every 30 minutes. It can be anything active, like stretching or walking to get them up out of their seat. Bodies need to move, especially when they’re young. Break up screen time with physical activities to get their blood pumping.

Enjoy More Family Time and Less Screen Time

Navigating your kids’ screen time can be a struggle. Luckily, there are small strategies you can implement daily to enforce limited time on their phones.

Author bio:  Cora Gold is the Editor-in-Chief of women’s lifestyle magazine, Revivalist. She strives to live a happy and healthy life with her family by her side.
Follow Cora on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Everyone with access to a screen in the modern era, whether a phone, tablet or gaming computer, needs help pulling away from their compelling content. Obsessive tendencies could make anyone’s reaction time or sensory awareness compromised.

However, sometimes in children, sensory processing disorder (SPD) explains more than an overreliance on technology for distractions. Understand the relationship between screen time and SPD, knowing how the signals illuminate a child’s development.

What is Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)?

SPD explains when the brain registers senses differently than others. Sometimes it is challenging to diagnose as it is a side effect of another condition or a child may need behavioral analysis.

Processing the five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch — could be difficult, delayed or cause sensitivities. However, SPD also affects other sensory abilities, including:

• Proprioception: Understanding the relationship between movement and location.
• Interoception: Perceiving internal occurrences in the body.
• Vestibular: Sensing balance and maintaining stable mobility.

When a child’s senses are affected by SPD, or its variants, such as sensory-based motor disorder (SBMD), it can alter their development. When encountering modern sensory influences like screens, it’s evident how the relationship between the two phenomena could impact mental, physical and emotional growth.

1. Screens Shouldn’t Be the Default Distraction

Guardians should find alternative ways to distract or cure children from distress. Not only do the rapid movements of cartoons or social media engagement confuse how their brains process visual stimuli, but it also exposes them to excess blue light, halting melatonin production needed for restful, healing sleep.

Human brains, especially for developing children, still need to adapt to match the influx of information coming through screens — and adult humans still haven’t perfected the art of processing information at the speed screens pressure our minds to.

Studies explain how screens cause developmental issues in young children, specifically those under two. Though many parents find screens an easy solution for a screaming child, this seemingly harmless phone passing could have long-term consequences, especially for children who already experience alternative sensory processing.

The system processing sensory input and mood analysis — the vestibular system — is inactive in front of screens, making them unable to practice controlling and responding to emotional changes.

2. Not All Skills Are Equal

Parents may be impressed by their child’s fine motor skills playing video games on a tablet or the ability to ingest information from YouTube videos. Though these skills may be helpful for a modern learning environment, excess exposure to these mediums inhibits potential learning in other soft skills, such as emotional awareness or relationship building.

Parents must not get distracted by the proficiency their children with SPD have in screen-related skills so much they forget how essential it is to peel them away to practice other talents. Parents can have pride, but they must remember how their sensory perceptions may not be able to adapt equally to skills outside of screens, like collaborative social interactions or anger management.

Handing children with SPD screens could immediately test their sensory capabilities in a discomforting way, causing sensory overload or chemical imbalances preventing further growth. No matter how much fun the child has or how focused they seem, sometimes the adverse effects aren’t immediately apparent.

Their minds are working on overdrive to keep up, and though this seems like a welcome test in maintaining attention, it tires most minds past capacity to where taking the screen away causes temperament issues.

3. Instigating Conversations Cause Self-Awareness

Children with SPD can adapt as long as parents set expectations early. Consider setting screen limits or creating habits to actively discuss how the child feels after extended time with screens. Parents could make a healthy, intentional routine of practicing self-reflection by asking their children with SPD after each screen session:

• How did you feel before using this technology, and how do you feel now?
• Did you learn anything while using the screen, and are there ways you could’ve learned this lesson without the screen?
• What drew you to the screen in the first place? Was it an emotion like boredom or frustration that could’ve been mitigated with another activity?
• What sights and sounds did you notice, and how did they make you feel?

Prompting questions like these will not openly vilify screen time — because sometimes it does have merit, especially for learning. However, it will force children with SPD to analyze their senses and feelings more actively.

4. Physical Side Effects Happen Alongside the Emotional

Screens inhibit emotional and sensory processing in the vestibular system. However, it’s vital to prevent other forms of stunted development. For children who may already struggle with developmental problems, adding physical conditions to the mix will only exacerbate sensory development.

One of the most common side effects of extended screen time is hunched backs and strained necks. The body shouldn’t be in these positions for long, and it causes insufficient self-regulation, among other ailments:

• Poor posture and back health
• Neck issues, like reduced neck extension
• Fewer chances for proprioception, causing stiff joints and less nervous system stimulation
• Sight deficiencies like depth perception problems or nearsightedness
• Reduced sleep quality

Developing Healthy Relationships With Screens

Everyone will feel the effects of prolonged screen exposure. However, children with SPD must pay special attention to how they interact and think after spending time with them. Parents can monitor their children and how they use screens.

However, technology is an inevitability humans need to learn to live alongside for a sustainable future. Instilling healthy habits and meaningful self-reflection will help children with alternative sensory development experiences evolve safely without an over-reliance on technology.

About the Author
Ava Roman (she/her) is the Managing Editor of Revivalist, a women’s lifestyle magazine that empowers women to live their most authentic life. When Ava is not writing you’ll find her in a yoga class, advocating for her children or whipping up something delicious in the kitchen!

Developing coordination in kids is important for several reasons. Coordination is the ability to use different parts of the body together smoothly and efficiently and is essential for many physical activities. Good coordination can help kids perform better in sports and other physical activities, and can also improve their balance, posture, and overall health.

In addition, coordination is closely linked to other skills, such as problem-solving and fine motor skills, and can help kids develop these skills as well. Overall, developing coordination in kids can help them lead active, healthy, and successful lives.

What is poor coordination in a child?

Poor coordination in a child can manifest in various ways, such as clumsiness, difficulty with tasks that require fine motor skills (such as writing or using scissors), or difficulty with activities that require coordination between the hands, feet, and eyes (such as catching a ball or playing sports).

Children with poor coordination may also have difficulty with balance and posture, and may be more prone to accidents or injuries. If a child is experiencing poor coordination, it is important to consult with a doctor or other healthcare provider to determine the cause and appropriate treatment.

Main causes of lack of coordination in kids

There are many potential causes of poor coordination in kids. Some possible causes include:

• Developmental delays: Some kids may have developmental delays that affect their coordination. Developmental delays are common in children with conditions such as autism or cerebral palsy.

• Sensory processing disorders: Kids with sensory processing disorders may have difficulty processing sensory information, such as touch, sound, or sight. This can lead to poor coordination.

• Neurological disorders: Neurological disorders, such as stroke, brain injury, or cerebral palsy, can affect the brain’s ability to control the body’s movements, leading to poor coordination.

• Muscular dystrophy: Muscular dystrophy is a group of genetic disorders that affect the muscles, leading to weakness and poor coordination.

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Kids with ADHD may have difficulty with coordination due to their impulsivity and inattention.

• Lack of practice or exposure to coordination-building activities: Kids who do not have the opportunity to practice and develop their coordination through activities such as sports, dance, or play may have poor coordination.

14 activities to build coordination in kids

Climbing

Climbing on a climbing wall or a climbing dome can help kids develop strength, coordination, and balance as they navigate the various routes and obstacles. Here is a list of outdoor climbing playsets you might want to check out.

A climbing dome can help develop coordination in kids by providing them with a fun and engaging way to improve their balance, flexibility, and strength. As they climb and maneuver around the dome, they will need to use their body in new and challenging ways, which can help improve their overall coordination.

Additionally, climbing can also improve a child’s problem-solving skills and spatial awareness, both of which are important for coordination. Here’s climbing dome overview to give you a better idea of the types of dome available today.

Playing Catch

Playing catch with a ball or other object can help kids develop hand-eye coordination and coordination between the hands and body.

Juggling

Juggling involves tossing and catching objects, which can help kids develop coordination between the hands and eyes.

Playing Sports

Sports such as baseball, soccer, basketball, and tennis require coordination between the hands, feet, and eyes, and can help kids develop these skills.

Doing Puzzles

Puzzles require kids to use their hands and eyes to put the pieces together, which can help develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

Playing a Musical Instrument

Playing a musical instrument involves coordinating the hands, fingers, and mouth to produce music.  This can help develop coordination and fine motor skills.

Dancing

Dancing involves moving the body in coordinated ways to music, which can help develop coordination and balance.

Skipping

Skipping involves coordinating the arms and legs in a rhythmic pattern, which can help develop coordination and balance.

Hula Hooping

Hula hooping involves rotating the hips and waist in a circular motion, which can help develop coordination and core strength.

Riding a Bike

Biking involves coordinating the pedaling motion with the movement of the bike, which can help develop coordination and balance.

Using Scissors

Using scissors to cut paper or other materials requires coordination between the hands and fingers, which can help develop fine motor skills.

Swimming

Swimming involves coordinating the movement of the arms and legs to propel the body through the water. It can help develop coordination and strength.

Hopscotch

Playing hopscotch involves jumping and hopping in a specific pattern, which can help develop coordination and balance.

Building Blocks

Playing with building blocks involves fitting the blocks together in different configurations, which can help develop coordination and problem-solving skills.

Theories Behind the Importance Of Play

All the activities mentioned here involve a level of play and recreation. To better understand this connection, here are some theories that can bring the role of play in child development to light:

Piaget’s theory of play

Jean Piaget believed play is essential for cognitive development. He divided play into four stages:

• Sensorimotor play: This occurs in the first two years of life and involves babies and toddlers exploring their world through their senses.

• Pretend play: It begins around age two and involves children pretending to be someone or something else.

• Games with rules: This type of play begins around age four and involves children following rules and working with others.

Contests and games of chance

This starts around age seven and involves children competing with others or taking risks.

Vygotsky’s theory of play

Lev Vygotsky believed that play is a social activity that helps children learn and develop. He argued that children learn by interacting with their environment and other people. Play provides a safe and supportive environment for children to explore and experiment.

Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development

Erik Erikson believed that play helps children develop a sense of self and their place in the world. He divided psychosocial development into eight stages, each associated with a specific crisis or challenge. Play can help children resolve these challenges and develop a healthy sense of self.

Montessori’s theory of play

Maria Montessori believed play is the child’s work. She argued that it’s essential for children’s physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. The Montessori theory of play seeks to emulate this child-centered environment to empower kids to have their own learning styles.

According to the experts at Recreations Outlet, incorporating play-based activities into a child’s routine not only supports cognitive and social development but also enhances their physical coordination, fostering well-rounded growth and skills.

If your child has poor coordination, consider working with experts to utilize these activities to further their growth.