Encouraging Young Children to Walk

That moment when your child takes their first tottering steps is beyond exciting for them and you.

But keeping up the excitement is hard.

Most days it's a battle either to fend of the raised arms & cries of "carry cuddle" or if they do want to walk to get them to walk slightly faster than a slow snail!

But when we do encourage small children to walk we are giving them a gift for life.

Children who grow up walking rather than jumping in the car or on a bus are much more likely to walk regularly as adults.

And walking miles every day is one of the best ways to fend off diabetes and heart disease and is great for mental health.

So how on earth do you get young children to enjoy walking AND to get a move on?

Well from daily and ongoing trial and error these are some of the ideas that we use to get a 3 year old ... who is a big fan of "carry cuddle" AND can go very, very slowly ... to cover a good mile or so a day ...

... as with most parenting tips, they mostly involve engaging their competitive spirit, curiosity or imagination and failing that distracting them in any daft way you can ... :-)

Tips to Encourage Children to Walk

What about you, how do you get your children moving? Do add your ideas to the list ...

Obviously the other great way to get them moving quickly when you've really got to get somewhere is their own wheels, whether trikes, scooters or bikes.

Three massive hits for us have been a Scuttle Bug trike, a Micro Scooter and a Micro G Balance Bike. 

The Micro Scooter isn't cheap but you can usually get them discounted or on eBay and having had a cheaper one that was a complete disaster, I can really recommend them.

The Micro-G balance bike is by the same company who make the scooters and came recommended to us by a friend who had been through a whole range of different balance bikes with her kids. It is amazing how fast a 3 or 4 year old can go on it perfectly balanced with their feet in the air!

It is seriously expensive but we found it at 50% off list price & it has been worth every penny.

Scuttle Bug	Micro Scooter	Micro G-Bike

And remember however hard it may seem to get your children to walk to school, it surely beats the car as this fabulous video from Start-Rite highlights ...