Do your children get 60 mins of active time a day? Add your comment and you could win a £100 voucher - NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

We've been asked by the team at Seara to find out if (and how) your children (aged 5-18) (and other children you know) are getting the full recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day?

For guidelines see the NHS Choices site

Please share your thoughts and experiences on this thread. Please also share your tips for what you do to encourage your DC's to be active - or what you do with your DC's to get them active?

Share your tips etc on this thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £100 Love2Shop voucher.

We do recognise that, for various reasons, not all children (or adults) are able to reach the target of 60 minutes of exercise per day - and that 'exercise' can mean different things for different people. If this is the case for your child, do also feel free to share your experiences about how you encourage physical activity in ways that are consistent with their capacities.

thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Also: Seara are running a "Grassroots To Greatness Competition" at the moment: enter your childs' football team into the competition for their chance to win a Seara football sponsorship for next season - worth £3,000! More details here www.seara.co.uk

Mine are 5 and 8. We walk to most places and they scooter or bike every day. Both do an hour and a half of dance per week plus an hour of swimming. The eldest is in scouts and does numerous physical activities per week.

They rarely sit inside and have to be dragged in from the garden most evenings

I'd say my boys do most days, depending on the weather.
Both walk / scooter to school/preschool whatever the weather.
DS1 has PE twice a week, swimming lessons, Beavers on a Saturday morning, and is always active even in the house - he never sits still.
DS2 goes to Montessori nursery where they have an hour outside play morning and afternoon whatever the weather. He is a bit more difficult to motivate on non-preschool days as he is very content pottering around the house, but swims most weeks and scooters into town / to park.
Whenever the weather is nice enough both boys play at the park on the way home from picking DS1 home from school. We very rarely get in the car to do shopping, pop into town etc. as we live near enough to walk.
Today, they had a lazy morning in front of the TV but also played in the garden and have been to the park for an hour. We often go to the woods and local country parks at weekends, so although Dh and I are not particularly sporty (Dh cycles and I swim, but no team sports or clubs) we are quite 'outdoorsy' as a family, which I think helps.

I'm sure my children do get more than an hour a day. It takes 30 minutes for them to walk to school to and then another 30 to walk back. Then they have their clubs that they go to and the garden where they play badminton, tennis or football for at least a couple of hours a day, especially in the summer.

We walk most places, dd is 9.

She has more than an hour each day and it consists of walking, running, dancing, (tap, ballet, Jazz, modern). Climbing wall at youth club, play equipment at park, scooter, lola ball, football, rugby with her brothers (older than 18). I'm sure she is active in other ways, just trying to think.

Yes most days but not everyday.

Boy 14 - at the moment has athletics and cricket at school four days a week (combination of games lessons/ PE lessons and after school club) plays football on the day he has nothing at school - although he does tend to be out on his lunch break. Saturday has cricket matches weather permitting and taking part in some county hockey training on some Sundays. He also likes to swim and play out with friends.

Girl 11 is less sporty but still has athletics and rounders during PE/ games lessons and after school club. Has a weekly swimming lesson and has a bigger circle of friends to skate or bike with at weekends.

Definitely!

DS1 (13) walks 15 minutes to and from school and walks the dog for half an hour 5 or 6 times a week. Then in addition to sports at school he dances 4 times a week (for between 30 minutes and 2 hours) and plays football/trains once or twice a week depending on the time of year.

DS2 (9) runs round non stop in the playground for 15 minutes before school plus playtimes and lunchtimes and plays out for at least an hour most days and then in addition to PE at school he runs for a club for an hour a week, plays football once a week, dances twice a week and does a fell race and/or bike ride most weekends. He also plays for the school football team and plays rugby for a club every Sunday during the season.

I am not sporty (I dance for an hour once a week) but DH is very outdoorsy and walking the dog as a family (or the boys together) helps I think. Luckily I have very active boys who are never really still.

Looking at their lists it makes me wonder if they do too much but they are both very fit and we don't push them to do any of it (except maybe paying DS1 to walk the dog whilst we are at work!) we ferry them about because they enjoy being active.

DS1 does a paper round every day except Sunday which takes him about 45 mins of cycling. He walks to and from school every day (about 5 mins). He also plays cricket once a week and walks to other clubs eg Scouts, youth club etc (anything from 5 to 20 mins).

DD does ballet once a week, athletics twice a week, gymnastics once a week, all an hour or more. She also walks to school, Guides, Scouts etc as DS1. Maybe some days she doesn't get an hour tho (today for example).

DS2 plays cricket in the summer - training and matches, three times a week; also gym an hour a week, athletics twice a week for an hour, footie training an hour a week, match 40 mins a week in the season, also (tho not at the minute) he does swim or diving lessons, plus usually a good deal of time each day kicking a ball or scootering with his mates. He walks to school about 7 mins each way. He also loves to play golf or go cycling whenever he gets the chance (eg in half term did two days of a cycling club 10am to 3pm)

I think we need to have a family swim as often as we can at the weekend as none of them do swim lessons at the moment; also DD needs to make a bit more effort - she doesn't seem to run about with her friends as the boys do.

ds1 is 13 and very active, he plays football or rugby every lunchtime at school with mates or goes to a fball/rugby club at school during lunch break, also PE 3 times per wk. once home he usually either goes on the trampoline or kicks a ball around the garden.
Weekends he is a little less active especially if raining when he can be found hanging off the furniture complaining "its boring indoors"
DS2 is 10 has autism & mild cerebral palsy so sport & exercise is hard, he is also pretty lazy, def more of an indoors type, although he does love the trampline, if it wasnt for our trampoline he really wouldnt get any exercise at all, he can just sort of throw himself about & it doesnt matter if he falls over.

Our trampoline is the best thing we have ever bought.

Ds seven years old and not getting 60 mins daily exercise at school- a measly 30-40 minutes of PE a week.

He enjoys sport so does loads outside school. Each week tennis 3 hours, soccer 3 hours, cricket 2 hours, swimming 1 hour, cycling to and from sports clubs, or with me when I'm running, 2 hours, fell walking 0-7 hours depending on weather and our plans. Loves being in fresh air and he's always full of beans. Oh and many more hours messing around on the trampoline, playing tig, scooting etc with friends. Days are just too short

I never really thought to time it but they do play in the garden and sometimes park, and run around generally. no sports clubs or anything though so they could probably do more. I am thinking to get a trampoline and climbing frame for something extra in the garden

Dc1 (17) not at the moment as studying but used to go to gym until recently 4 times a week
Dc2 (15) gym at school twice. Week and walks the dog but comes nowhere near to an hour a day
Dc3 (11) absolutely yes. He is very active, 15 min walk to school and back, sport at school, football and cricket, skateboarding, scootering, swimming and generally being outdoors when the weather is good.

More than twice that.

My DD has 4 hours of PE at school a week, two sessions of dance at school and 9 hours of dance lessons a week outside school so 15 hours a week of physical exercise.

My 6 year old is quite active I think. He gets PE at school plus swimming lessons once a week and is endlessly begging DH or I to play football with him in the garden. He's had a bike since he was 2.5 and has always enjoyed bike rides so he usually asks to go out at least once over a weekend. We did 7km with him and his little sister last weekend and they were both running and climbing at the playground at the park halfway round too.

Recently, DS has been asking if he can come running with me when I do Parkrun on a Saturday morning but I'm a bit worried about the effect of regularly running 5km on his joints at his age so I've been putting him off. He's been round with me on his bike though.

We aim to average it out over the week - some weekdays it is really hard to fit in, especially if it is lashing with rain. If the weather is good we scooter/swim most days. I would love it if DS had more opportunities for sport at school; am trying to encourage school to put on more after school sports clubs, but at the moment it seems like a losing battle.

My two ride to school every day which is a total of 30 minutes a cycling. We try to get over to our local park two or three times a week. They have PE twice a week in school and activities at lunchtime. There are times at the weekends when I do not think they are active enough and I do wish there was more money in school budgets to buy in professional sports coaches.

My 6yo DSis gets that. She has 2 PE classes, 2 sports clubs, swimming practice and walks to school a few times a week. She also plays in our garden a lot on her swing.

DS8 - I would say yes, more often than not:

PE at school
Games at school
Swimming at school
Trampolining at home and riding bikes with friends in our street (cul de sac)
Judo
Karate
Walking to after school activities
Occasionally walking home from school
Local leisure centre activity days where he gets to try out all sorts.

I try to give my boys (5 and 3) as much exercise as possible - none of us cope well with being cooped up for too long. Some days are better than others but usually DS gets lots of outdoor play at school followed by a trip to the park/swimming/gymbobs. DS2 and I usually walk to various activities and groups (tumble tots/swimming etc). Both have just learnt to ride pedal bikes so family bike rides are now on the agenda.

Otherwise being members of the national trust works well for us as a family and encourages us to get exercise in lovely surroundings (oftern with fantastic playgrounds)

Getting a huge trampoline for the garden was the best thing I ever did for my DC. All 3 bounce together (not strictly the safest, maybe!) and the exercise they get is great.

They also do loads of playing on bikes, scooters, roller skates etc, and swinging and climbing about on a big old tyre hung off a tree!

Added to this are gymnastics classes and we take them swimming most weekends.

So yes, most days my lot get at least 60 mind physical activity of some sort.

I do realise that we are very lucky to live where we do, with plenty of outside space to run around in/ flat tarmac to ride bikes etc on.

Yes definitely, they walk to and from school, which is 20 mins each way, they have their break times at school and they do not sit still very much at home!

On top of this, they do swimming, running club and school sports too at the moment this is football.

On the weekends they like riding their bikes in the local park.

Easily - if DD isn't doing organised activities like ballet, swimming, gym & football then she is running around at playtime, riding her bike, jumping on her trampoline, skipping, going for walks, riding her scooter, or just running around aimlessly.

Not including pe and playtimes, as im sure sometimes he'll sit and chat to friends, pe id 'lame' in his opinion as he does a lot of stuff out of school that is a lot more challenging.

He's 10 and is coming up for his Taekwondo black belt grading. He trains at least four times a week for at least 1.5 hours per session. Often its a lot more. Two of the lessons are sport Taekwondo which he comes out of absolutely dripping wet from head to toe in sweat :)

However, because of the amount of training and effort he puts into that, we're really lax on him on his 'off' day/s as we don't want him to totally eat sleep breathe Taekwondo, his friends come round and they spend hours on the Xbox.

Sometimes he'll go on the trampoline with his friends. He walks most days to school so im sure it works out to over an hour a day spread out. But he is allowed to be very lazy when hes off!!

His friends really don't do much, the two im thinking of don't do anything organised at all. Their parents have tried them with all sorts but they lose interest after a few weeks.

Does the fact that my DS (3) and DD (1) NEVER sit down and always run rather than walk count? Aside from that they chase around outside the house a couple of afternoons a week, help dig in the garden / allotment a couple of times a week, we regularly put the radio on and have "discos" in the sitting room and we take them to the park to play football every week or so.
I don't actively monitor how much active time they are getting but that's because they are obviously getting enough, if they had a tendency to be a bit less active generally then I think I'd pay more attention!

Yes they do.

My DC are 7, 9 and almost 11. They all walk to school and back (half a mile each way) every day.

DS1 is very sporty and plays hockey, cricket and football for local teams so has an hour training plus matches for each of them during the week. He also competes in athletics competitions at this time of year. In his spare time he is usually out playing football or tennis with his mates.

DS2 isn't as sporty as DS1, but does play hockey. He loves riding his bike and spends a lot of his spare time riding around in circles with his mates.

DD goes horseriding once a week. She also does active stuff with Brownies, and spends a lot of time in the park or on her scooter.

All 3 DC go to an open access play session for 2hrs on a Friday night, which is very active.

At the weekends we often go out on our bikes as a family and do a 10 mile ride (with a picnic halfway!). We also walk a lot of forest trails etc. If the weather isn't great we swim, or DH takes the boys to play badminton. It is definitely getting easier to be active together as a family as the DC get older.

Our difficulty is trying to find a day when ds (12, nearly 13) doesn't do an activity (as advised by his coach). We've had to deem Tuesday, which is a day when he "just" has PE, as "less active" so that'll be his "no training" day.

5 days a week, he walks to/from school: 50 minutes. Two days a week he gets PE. 3 days a week he gets rugby (he's in the "Rugby" class at one of the secondary schools that the SRU as funding as a "School of Rugby), plus after-school rugby training on a Monday. On Wednesdays and Sundays he has c. 1.5 hours rugby training or a game at his local club (he's been playing rugby since he was 5). On Saturdays he has 2 hours of cycle training. On some Wednesdays and Sundays he has cycle races (so we have to manage the conflict with the rugby).

The also appear to play various forms of rugby/football at break time or at lunch time at school (in S1 they're not allowed out the school grounds). He is fortunate to be at a state school that still has decent playing fields.

Hence the challenge in trying to find days for him to do cycle training without exhausting him.

We didn't push him into it except in the first couple of years of rugby when he wouldn't want to g but always loved it once he was there - he just enjoys the activity. The cycling is a new passion - one which started through watching the Tour de France and costs a lot more and is more dangerous than the rugby - but he is showing talent at that as well.

As a result, we are happy to let him watch TV and play computer games when he wants to perhaps not what Seara want to hear

I think the key thing is integrating exercise into every day activities (like walking to school and ds used to cycle to his primary school, only about 7-10 minutes each way, in P6 there on his own and in P7 on his own both there and back) and then encouraging them in areas in which they show an interest. It's also about letting them have the freedom to go out and do things on their own: he cycles to get the papers at the weekend (part of "earning" his pocket money) and since last summer we have been letting him cycle in the neighbourhood (and gradually a bit further afield) on his own.