Stuck at home during quarantine and the kids are driving you up the wall? Fret not. Here are a few things you can do to help them release all of that pent-up energy since the lockdowns started:
7 Things You Can Do to Help Your Child Deal with All That Pent-Up Energy
1. Hold a backyard Olympics meet.
This s a good way to get the whole family moving. You can come up with a few running or relay events and top the day off with more creative events such as a Nerf shooting or archery event or both!
2. Pretend-Play.
One great thing about pretend-play is it enhances children’s imaginations. It allows them to explore worlds in the safety of your home. One minute, they can be Sherlock Holmes and Watson out to solve a crime. The next minute, they can be Usain Bolt out to get another win.
The good thing about this is they can do this both indoors and outdoors. But wouldn’t you agree that some time under the sun is good for you and your kids? While they’re out playing in the garden, you get to enjoy some quiet time indoors. Win-win situation!
3. Get a trampoline.
This is so worth the investment! Rowdy kids only need a few minutes jumping up and down a trampoline to let off some of that pent-up energy and then he or she can go back to doing schoolwork or whatever.
4. Do a scavenger hunt around the house.
You will need to do some legwork with this one as much as your kids. Prepare clues and treasures for them to hunt the day before. Once your kids are asleep, make the necessary preps and set-up for their big scavenger hunt. All you need to do the following day is to wait for them to finish the race while you enjoy a book or a movie in your favorite seat.
5. Exercise and get fit together outdoors.
Even if you can work out indoors, there’s nothing like exercising outdoors to make you feel great.
You don’t have a solid workout routine to show to your kids; just let them run around the backyard or lawn for a few minutes. That oughta tire them out.
6. Make chores fun for them.
Getting work done around the house may seem dull and dreary. Why don’t you make it interesting for your kids? Give them fun activities they can while doing their chores. You can have them pretend-play to be landscape pavers working on your front lawn as you do your gardening.
Or perhaps role-play as astronauts sweeping through the cosmos as they clean out the attic. A little creativity goes a long way.
7. Reenact some of their favorite movie scenes.
We all went through it. At one point in our childhood, a lot of us wore blankets as capes and used twigs as swords. Now that superhero movies are huge, watch one of your family’s favorite superhero movies and recreate one of the scenes in your living room with your kids taking on the role of the hero and you as the bad guy.
Being under lockdown is challenging. Most of us applaud our frontline health care and essential workers for courageously doing their jobs despite the dangers involved. However, we forget about our little heroes who have fully cooperated with the lockdown rules even if it went against their very nature.
So applaud and celebrate your kids for being such troopers amid all this uncertainty and chaos. They deserve it.
