Today, kids are spending less time outdoors and more time cooped up inside their homes. You can probably remember playing outside your home until dinnertime as a child. With the current technological distractions, it is essential to encourage your loved ones to spend more time outdoors playing and bonding. There are many proven benefits of outdoor events and activities on your children’s health and overall body development.
Also, sharing outdoor activities together with your loved ones strengthens your family bond, communication, and well-being. Whether it is planning for a big camping trip, a day trip to the nearest state park, or spending time in your backyard, it doesn’t matter where you go as long as you are outside with your family. Here are some key benefits to spending time outdoors with your family.
Getting Outside Helps the Entire Family Unplug
With the current technological advancements, it is difficult to have some family time without individuals being attached to their tablet, smartphone, or personal computers. From personal experience, it is true that your family, including yourself, can spend the whole day on their gadgets and only show up during mealtimes.
Spending your free time in nature is an excellent remedy to combat being technological dependent for everyone in the family. During your free time, you can plan a day trip to any place that has limited reception and inform your family that the trip is gadget free. You may have some oppositions, but after getting to your destination, every member of your family will have to enjoy.
Family Time Can Boost Your Child’s Academic Performance
A child's academic success is largely associated with having parent(s) who offer support, guidance, and assistance when needed. Their early development stages are typically the toughest but essential to them especially when it comes to academic studying. When you provide quality guidance and support through your child's early academic years, it will have positive impacts in the future.
Spending time outdoors with your children is considered to be excellent for their mental development, since they have more time with the family. Across most studies, results show that kids who spend most of their time with their parent(s) are in the position to do better compared to those who spend less time with their family members.
Being in Nature Provides a Different Kind of Stimulation
Nature may prove to be less stimulating than your child’s violent video games, but in the real sense, it activates more senses, since your kid will be able to hear, see, smell, and touch their outdoor surroundings. When children spend less and less time in natural environments, their senses become narrower, reducing the richness of the human experience.
Also, spending time outdoors helps your kid to get moving, since most ways of enjoying and interacting with nature involves more body exercise than spending the whole day on the couch. Your child does not have to join a local sports team. Riding a bike through the nearest park even just taking a walk around the neighborhood can have an effect on their health. Daily exercise is not only good for your children's physical health, but it also makes them more focused.
Can Nature Help with ADHD?
Currently, green space therapy or "green time" is increasingly becoming an alternative treatment for kids with ADHD. This technique involves playing outdoor or any other activities that take place outside. It can either be in your backyard or a park. Environmental experts believe that kids can increase their attention levels by being in a surrounding that minimizes many of the distractions that always occur in their daily life.
Playing Outside Can Help Build Confidence
The way your children play in nature has less structure compared to most types of indoor play. There are many ways of interacting with the outdoor surrounding ranging from your backyard to the park as well as a local hiking lake or trail. Allowing kids to choose how they react to nature means that they have the power to control their actions. Also, the unstructured style of outdoor play allows your kids to associate with their environments. They can think freely, design activities, and approach the universe in inventive ways.