How to Keep your Children Active and Engaged

What do you do during your free time or during the day? Every family has activities that they engage in and especially young children. It is important to ensure that a family has wholesome forms of entertainment that foster growth, development and encourage bonding. Nothing is worse than having nothing to do. Usually this leads to mischief.


Keeping your children engaged in some fun activity the enjoy may sound easy but it may not be as easy to achieve. Children have a short concentration span and they need constant stimulation. The need both active and passive forms of entertainment. You also want to know that what they are doing is safe for them physically, emotionally and socially.

Passive entertainment does not call for any involvement at all. You mainly sit back, do nothing and enjoy. TV has been the leading form of passive entertainment with kids enjoying cartoons like Ben 10, Dora and so on. Many parents have knowingly and unknowingly misused this form of entertainment by letting their kid watch TV mindlessly for hours and without any form of supervision. While this walks to keep children busy, it is very dangerous.


Passive entertainment is the kind where child is not directly involved in the entertainment activity. Here is where TV comes in. Unfortunately many parents allow their children to only experience passive entertainment especially watching TV and movies. It is a common thing for children to spend all their time mindlessly watching TV. Cartoons like Ben 10, Hannah Montana and many others have become a strong addiction in children.


Entertainment can only be considered active if it gets you off your feet or if it uses you mind. Watching a video where you are required to dance a long is a good example and so is playing a board game or going outside to play baseball, football, basketball and so on. It in many cases uses some or all of the senses and there must be adult supervision unless the children are older. This becomes a great way for families to bond together and it takes planning and thought to make it work. All these factors go into making active entertainment great for the family.


The two forms of entertainment have pros and cons. The simple remedy for a family is to make time for both kinds of entertainment, taking advantage of the benefits each has to offer and avoiding the negatives.  Balance is the name of the game here.


You may be a busy parent and that can be understand buy your family is also important so you must make time for them. It may take some creativity to work out your schedule but if you want this to happen then you will make it work somehow.  You will need to take advantage of the resources you have. Your children will learn a lot and be very sharp.


Active games have a number of positives. They keep the minds of your children active. Their bodies benefit from the activity and the stimulation is necessary for their physical and mental growth not to mention their health.


Start when your children are young and create balanced entertainment for them. They will grow up happy and healthy. They will learn to use their minds and body in the right way.