Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 238 | Five Ways to Help Your Kids Burn Energy in the Winter

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Ep. 238 | Five Ways to Help Your Kids Burn Energy in the Winter · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And so I think like actually kind of take the opposite of how far can we push bringing fun, playful things into the home while obviously being like sustainable to the home and not just making you're destroying everything.
• 0:15
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood. Fun couple things. If you're watching this on YouTube, which, by the way, if you're not, we are on YouTube every single episode. We absolutely love it. It's fun. If you want to subscribe and check us out on there, sometimes we hold up things or use things or it's just fun to watch on video. But if you are watching, you'll notice a little different stuff from Jeremy. I think he said we had some furnace problems in the studio, so the next five to ten episodes will look like this awesome, aesthetically vibing brick wall behind Jeremy, which is kind of fun.
• 0:42
  And then also kind of I wouldn't call this a repeat episode, but a deviation of an episode we've done in the past that you guys liked. And this one is five ways to help your kids burn energy in the winter. We've done an episode talking about embracing winter as a family team, and you guys really love that. So we wanted to focus one layer down of, OK, well, what about high energy kids specifically? What about when kind of the house gets pent up?
• 1:03
  Um, and so we're just going to rattle off five really quick ones. And the first one is exercise as a family. This is a big one. Uh, we like to do something like this, Jeremy, I'd love to hear how you guys do this with older kids, but for us with toddlers, it really just means like do anything that's active. So chase the kids around the house. Um, I, that that's a game we actually play. We're all actually basically kind of just like read them. I think they, uh, they call it like mad duck or something like that, which is this game that their grandpa taught them, which basically just run around and chase each other. And that is our version of exercise when you're
• 1:30
  Or I'll actually do this little app like the Nike app on the iPad, which is a really fun one where I'll actually try to incorporate. We do it in the garage and incorporate the kids to like, hey, do it with me, do the pushups, do the crunches, all that stuff. And that's a really fun one. And I noticed that really helps, even though I will say, by the way, granted, you know, we do live in Maui, so we don't have that like struggle as much with winter. It's just more just struggle with toddlerhood, which is its own winter. Winter is coming. Toddlers have came. But yeah, what would you say?
• 1:56
  Yeah, another one you guys is that there are all these new kind of video game platforms that require movement. They use balls, they kind of use that kind of kinetic energy. Oh yeah. And those can be a lot of fun as a family. And so finding a couple of games that your family likes, some of the dance games are this way, but there's a lot of other ones that are constantly coming out. It's one of the great things about some of the modern video game consoles that really do a lot more sort of action. So that could be another thing that you invest in during the winter to burn off some of the energy.
• 2:24
  Yes. Another one is inside a playhouse or like trampoline park. So we actually have one here on Maui. If you ever come to Maui, ultimate air, we love ultimate air. John, if you're watching, you're the man, a good friend, own and operate and run that thing. And it's just like the cleanest, the nicest, the best one. And our kids absolutely love it. I mean, I love it, right? It's one of those ones where I kind of want to go because I want to jump and I want to absolutely blow up 10 year olds in the dodgeball arena. And it's so fun. But yeah, that's a really, really good one.
• 2:54
  I don't know many places in like the warehouses or like kind of trampoline parks that are like the best psychologically for just like containment of toddlers where you can visually see them, but you kind of know they're in a building. That alone is worth it. Like when I really need peace of mind or just want to just be like, let them kind of go without having to micromanage them or make sure they don't die. That's a great place.
• 3:14
  Yeah, I would say another one of you guys is wrestling with your kids. There's so much evidence that this is really, really helpful for bonding. It's not just for energy. So if you're resistant to this or you haven't really thought about this, I'd encourage you guys, especially in the winter, maybe set up a room in your house, like pad it a little bit more.
• 3:34
  and make it a fun thing for you and your kids to just kind of wrestle around on the floor and really enjoy that time. And to make it a time is really kind of a cool idea, especially, like, again, in the winter, trying to burn energy. Don't get them all riled up right before you put them to bed. This is something that's kind of good to do a couple hours before bedtime. But really try to get out that energy and really enjoy that sort of rough-and-tumble play that is so healthy between dads and their kids.
• 3:59
  Yep. And then the last one is, and Jeremy's actually seen this one firsthand, is Scooter Track, which we have a fun little home where our downstairs can go in a circle, meaning like you can just keep literally going and it's like a setup perfectly for a track. And so and by the way, I'm totally of the belief, and I think dads take this on too, of like, I want our home to be a place of joy, of fun, of being a blast, almost to be a little theme park. And so I want to push the envelope with how far can we go of bringing like fun.
• 4:25
  fun, rebellious, quote unquote, things that people say don't do in the home, like throwing balls or riding your skateboard or riding your scooter and do them in the home while, of course, respecting the home, making sure stuff doesn't break. And so we push that and we test it rather than like no to everything. We say, hey, can we get scooters that have like non-marking wheels that don't put anything? And we found those. And so then like they do that and it's fun. It doesn't leave any marks. We tried, you know, like, can we play catch or can you throw football in the house?
• 4:50
  At some level we did but then they started to break some things that too much So we said hey, maybe let's wait to a little older because I was trying to explain like hey You can only throw it this high but like my kids don't have that accuracy age five But I think that's a fun philosophy by the way to change the philosophy of like basically no playing inside because we say no I don't think parents realize how many times they say no to just like don't do that Don't do that don't do that don't do that And so I think like actually kind of take the opposite of how far can we push?
• 5:13
  bringing fun, playful things into the home while obviously being like sustainable to the home and not just making you're destroying everything. And we've tried to find that so that then there is kind of controlled things that seem like, oh my goodness, I can't believe I can scooter in the home. But when you like do it, that doesn't do anything to the home. It doesn't break anything. It doesn't mess anything up. So it's really kind of fun. So those are five ways to help your kids burn energy in the winter.
• 5:35
  And you guys, it's really important to be creative as a dad to get a lot of these kinds of ideas going. Sometimes we get stuck. And so that's why we wrote and published 31 Creative Ways to Build Your Family Team. So just like Jeff and I just went over five different creative ways to really help you guys get through these winter months, this book, it's also a video course, is really helpful for kids.
• 5:59
  understanding what are some of those creative ways really to get your mind working creatively for how to build your family. So you can get 31 creative ways to build your family team on amazon at familyteams.com. So check that out.